
Book "0 3 




Political History of Europe 

From 1815 to 1848. 

BASED ON CONTINENTAL AUTHORITIES. 
BY 

B, H. CARROLL, Jr., LL.B.,M. A., Th. D., Ph.D. (Berol.) 

Head of the Department of History and Political Science in Baylor 
University; author of "Good Roads," "Genesis of Antimis- 
sionism, " "Die Annexion von Texas Ein Beitrag- zur 
Geschichte der Monroe Doctrin, " etc. ; member of Tex- 
as and Kentucky Historical Societies, of American 
Historical Association, of the National Ge- 
og^raphic Society, etc. 

BAYLOR UMIVERSITY PRESS 






FOREWORD. 



This histor}^ is intended to give American Students 
an accurate if somewhat succinct account of the course 
of Post-Napoleonic European Political History. While 
a study of sources has not been neg-lected the work 
does not pretend to be more than a compilation from 
the best and most accessible and usually untranslated 
continental authorities. Where American authorities 
are used it has usually been so indicated. While Bulle 
has larg-elj^ been drawn on for facts, and while the au- 
thor has used material from the notes of lectures heard 
in Berlin from Lenz, Delbrueck and other world-famous 
historians to whose spoken as well as written words 
he feels deeply indebted, yet the view's expressed 
sometimes differ so materially from those of any of 
these or the numerous other learned writers consulted 
that the author beg's leave, especially where they should 
prove displeasing-, to assume responsibility for them. 



ggia 



EXPLANATION. 



Owing to the necessity of printing by installments; in 
the hurry of getting- out the work for the use of this 
term's students, and to the limited facilities of the Baj^- 
lor Press; as well as to hurried proof-reading- on the 
part of the author; the present edition contains numer- 
ous slight errors, mostly typographical, which will not 
be found in future editions. 

The author will appreciate having his attention called 
to any error of fact, diction, or printing, as he hopes in 
the future to revise and re-publish. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGBS. 

INTRODUCTION 5-11 

Social and Political Status of the People of Germany in the Beginnina of 

the XIX Century. 
CHAPTER ONE 13-24 

The Nature of Histoi-y— the Rulers of the Great Nations after the Con- 
gress of Vienna. 
CHAPTER TWO 25-35 

The Romance Nations. 
CHAPTER THREE 36-42 

The Position of Austria under Metternich in European Politics and 

Character Sketch of Count Metternich. 
CHAPTER FOUR 43-59 

Political Progress of Germany. The Eurschenshaft and the Demagogue 

Persecution. South German States. 
CHAPTER FIVE 61-76 

Renewed Revolutions in Italy and Spain. Reactionary Congresses of 

Troppau, Laybach, and Verona. The Monroe Doctrine. Humiliation 

of Spain. 
CHAPTER SIX 78-90 

The War for Greek Independence. 
CHAPTER SEVEN 91-96 

The Fall of the Holy Alliance. The Battle of Navarino and the Crea- 
tion of the Kingdom of Greece. 
CHAPTER EIGHT 97-104 

France before the July Revolution. 
CHAPTER NINE lOS-118 

The July Revolution, 
CHAPTER TEN 119-124 

The Revolution in Belgium. 
CHAPTER ELEVEN 125-131 

The Revolution in Poland. 
CHAPTER TWELVE 132-138 

Revolutions in Switzerland, Italy, and Germany. 
CHAPTER THIRTEEN 139-149 

The Liberal Propaganda in South Germany and What Came of It. 
CHAPTER FOURTEEN 150-155 

The Day of Small Things in Prussia. 
CHAPTER FIFTEEN 157-162 

Early Years ol Louis Phillippe's Reign. 
CHAPTER SIXTEEN 163-169 

Wars of the Pretenders in Spain and Portugal. 
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 170-177 

Oriental Questions. Revolt of Mehemed Ali°and Conflicting Interests 

of the Great Powers. Afghanistan and the Far East. The Opium War. 

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 178-186 
The Violation of the Constitution in Hanover. Prussia and the Revi- 
val of the Struggle for the Constitution. The Old Catholics. The Uni- 
ted Landtag. 

CHAPTER NINETEEN 187-199 
The European States on the Eve of the Revolution of 1848. 

CHAPTER TWENTY 200-221 
France and the February Revolution. Socialist Rebellion. Rise of Na- 
poleon. 



INTRODUCTION. 



SOCIAL AND POLITICAL STATUS OF THE PEOPLE OF GER- 
MANY IN THE BEGiNNING OF THE XIX CENTURY. 



In Eng-land and France there arose Phoenix like out 
of the dissolution and ruins of the Feudal System the 
national king-dom uniting- the powers of the entire peo- 
ple, whereas in Germany there ensued therefrom a mul- 
titude of dwarf states continually embroiled with each 
other, l^lie Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, which 
has been wittily stigmatized by Voltaire as being neither 
holy nor Roman nor an empire, had been since the mid- 
dle of the thirteenth century without authority or pow- 
er outside of the little hereditary principalities from 
which they derived their names. There was no imperi- 
al army and no imperial court capable of exercising even 
a vestige of authorit5^ To be emperor was to be pos- 
sessed of the title and regalia of authorit}', without even 
the form much less the power thereof. The imperial 
revenues were scarcely equal tothose of a well-to-do farm- 
er of this day and time. The extent of the territorial 
division among the little lords, each of whom possessed 
almost absolute authority over his own people, is almost 
incredible. V/hat is today the Bavarian Palatinate for 
instance, a territory of some 105 square miles, was di- 
vided among 44 different states in which 127 little rulers 
exercised authority. Think of it! counts and princes 
possessed of less than a square mile of territory but 
possessing in those limits unbounded authority and be- 
ing responsible to no higher authority. 

The Empire was an empty frame, a category of 
worldly and Ecclesiastical princes, of free cities and free 
knights held tcgether only bj^ remembrances and cere- 
monies. These principalities and parts of the empire 
not only constantly engaged in wars and feuds with each 
other, but v/hen the "Empire", so called, was engaged 
in wars with other nations its nominal states were often 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

found fig-hting- on the other side. For example, in the 
Spanish Succession war Bavaria and other states and 
princes foug-ht on the side of France ag"ainst the Empire, 
while still later Saxony allied itself with Poland, Han- 
over with Eng-land, Pomerania with Sweden, etc. ad 
nauseam. If we mention an impotent imperial council 
in Vienna, an equally impotent court of appeal at Wetz- 
lar, 9,000 cases behind the docket and a still more help- 
less parliament composed of paid ag-ents of the more 
powerful Estates, it gives us the sum total of the Holy 
Roman Empire at the beginning- of the XIX Centur5^ 
In this moribund condition it ling-ered until Napoleon 
came and graciouslj'^ put it out of its misery. The lit- 
tle lords sold and rented their subjects as mercenary 
soldiers in a way that for meanness and cruelty sur- 
passed the negro slave trade as spiced wine does water. 
The attitude of noble lords toward all peasant girls and 
women on his estates was that of head of the harem nor 
was this state of affairs confined to the peasants, 
for even the better families openly sold their wives and 
daughters to the nobility and royaltj'- as mistresses. "A 
little noble blood can do no harm" became a proverb of 
that day. 

A certain Fraulien von Schlotheim, herself of the no- 
bility, after being auctioned off in this way to the "Lands 
Father", made her escape but was caught by her par- 
ents and turned over to the lecherous libertine, a man 
so base that when he died he is said to have left behind 
74 illegitimate children. This deed of the parents met 
with the applause of society. "The Hessian nobility", 
said a lady of Cassel to an enraged friend, "dare not de- 
prive themselves of this advantage." It may be of inter- 
est to note that this prince provided for his illegitimate 
children by a tax on salt. The number of little houses 
that still stand about the Palace in the g-reat garden at 
Dresden, the homes of the inmates of the royal harem, 
the chateaus on Peafowl island near Berlin and similar 
resorts for kings and their concubines, proclaim how 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

shamelessly royalty lived up the divine right of satisfy- 
ing- its lusts. The hunting laws not only deprived the 
peasants of all rights of fish and game but commanded 
their services to such an extent that peasant girls w^ere 
sometimes made to serve as hunting dogs to aid the 
hounds. The Markgraf Carl Frederick William from 
Ansbach, shot a chimnej'^ sweep from the roof of a 
barn in order to please his mistress who wanted to see 
the fellow tumble just for the fun of it, and when the 
dead man's wife begged for some recompense from her 
"gracious lord" for the loss of her husband it is related 
as a proof of his generosity that he gave her five Gulden. 

The three principal grades of society were the Es- 
tates of the Nobility, Citizens (tradesmen and inhabi- 
tants of cities), and peasants. The higher clergy rank 
as nobles and the Bourgoise are the second and not the 
third Estate as in France. 

The relation of these classes to each other was not 
everywhere the same. The "Nobility", made up mostly 
of the possessors of landed estates, were in possession 
of essential privileges. The possibility of promotion 
in the civil and military departments of the government 
was open to them alone, but the most of them were and 
are very poor and were obliged to seek court service 
where they were subject to the humor of the princes 
and were accustomed to receive from them, not only 
shameful words, but often blows and kicks. This was 
not supposed to be dishonoring any more than it was 
supposed to degrade a nobleman to give his daughter as 
mistress for his prince, but whatever the nobles suf- 
fered from the princes they paid back a hundred fold 
to the citizens and peasants. 

The cities were almost all without life and power, 
drawing Chinese walls around themselves and oppress- 
ing the neighboring lands and villages and the travelling 
merchants with their staple-rights and other privileges 
and restrictions on trade and industry. The citizens 
stood higher in the social scale and were better protect- 



8 INTRODUCTION. 

ed than the peasants, but were subject to the pride and 
arrogance of the nobility and officers. As in France 
hig-h g-entlemen thoug-ht nothing- of having their serv- 
ants thrash a citizen, even a Voltaire, so in Germany 
the same thing was frequent. On May 24th, 1783, a cer- 
tain Lieutenant von Boehnen in Stuttgart was stand- 
ing in front of the guard house and arsenal when an offi- 
cial of the city, a citizen but a civilian, passed the lieu- 
tenant without lifting his hat, at which the worthy offi- 
cer was so enraged that he had the citizen taken into 
the guard house and given 25 blows with a stick in or- 
der to teach him how to treat a gentleman. Within the 
last few years a private soldier was run through with 
a sword by a Prussian officer for offering to shake 
hands with him, although they had been comrades as 
children and at school. A general, von Stutterheim, 
was notorious even in the reform period for bragging of 
the number of citizens he had ordered thrashed. The un- 
speakable contempt of the nobility for the trading class- 
es "kauflaute" was only equalled by the hound-like ser- 
vility of these classes themselves, a servility which 
proves the maxim that any caste class division will in 
three generations justify itself. 

The "Peasants" constituted by far the mostnumerous 
portion of the population. Their legal, social and agri- 
cultural dependence on the Nobility gave to the consti- 
tution of the land and to the circumstances and con- 
ditions of society their most real stamp; so long as 
these existed there could be no real formation of the ar- 
my, or of the administration such as the catastrophe at 
Jena rendered so imperatively necessarj'. The peas- 
ants had been in the earh'^ Middle Ages far freer, and 
had beside the tithes to the church, only a series of 
services and contributions which they were due to the 
State. The right to these contributions and services 
had been partly filched and partly purchased from the 
disintegrating state bj^ the more important nobles and 
bv the monasteries and churches. So it came to pass 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

that the knights who were in the beg^inning- only more 
important farmers, ceased to farm all but a small por- 
tion of their estates and became landlords, subletting- 
and living- on the profits of tenant labor. These vast 
landed estates they increased, crowding out the little 
farmers and independent peasants who owned their own 
little plots of ground. And at the same time the de- 
mands on their tenants for the services of themselves, 
their children, their teams and tools were constantly in- 
creasing. During the desolation and raids of the "Thirty 
Years War" the nobility had found opportunity to extend 
its possessions and to bring the balance of the peasant 
population in a state of dependence. The next step 
was to obtain the police power and the legal jurisdiction 
over the peasants on their estates. After this was ac- 
complished, if a peasant was injured he was dependent 
on the police of his lord to protect him in anj'^ land or 
civil dispute, while the only court of appeal for the peas- 
ant was that whose judge was his lord. If certain ser- 
vices were claimed, the only one who had the right to de- 
cide what and how much or hovv' many these services 
were, was the man v/ho claimed them. 

A fine picture of this state of affairs is given in Rab- 
ener's satirical letters. The only legislation taken 
against this was certain measures of rulers like Freder- 
ick William and Frederick II., which had as their ob- 
ject, not the protection of individual peasants against 
wrong and force, but were intended merely to prevent 
the number of peasant families from being dimin- 
ished so that the king could not find the necessary 
material for recruiting. There were in the beginning- 
many small variations as to the different classes of 
peasants, but the constant tendency was to take away 
privilege after privilege and increase demand after de- 
mand until all were reduced to the same dull level of 
more than quasi slaver3^ According to a proverb of 
that da3^ "Rusticus est quasi rind nisi quod sibi cornua 
desint." In short the peasant was made of different 



10 INTRODUCTION. 

clay, a creature of a low^r order than man, bound to the 
clod, without the right to emig-rate, to move or even 
marry without the permission of his landlord. When 
the children were grown they were presented to the 
landlord who sought out for himself as many servants 
and maids as were needed for the household, who as a 
matter of course received no wages. The peasant 
must furnish sons, daughters, cattle, and his own ser- 
vices to do the work of his lord and pay besides large 
portions from the produce of the ground that he him- 
self worked. 

This was not synonymous with negro slavery for the 
owner of slaves was obliged to support them and to fur- 
nish them with tools and see that they did not starve. 

But the German peasant furnished his own tools, 
supported himself, and when he was needed was forced 
to appear with team, plow, harrow and other agricultu- 
ral instruments furnished by himself to do the work of 
his master. The peasant differed from a slave as a fix- 
ture differs from a chattel for you could only sell the 
peasant when you sold the land, but when the land was 
sold he went with it as a fixture as much as if he were 
a fruit tree. 

It is needless to say that the peasant's work was bad 
work. Ever}/ thing over the living which they must 
make from the land allotted to them or starve went to 
the master. Hut and field were allowed as far as pos- 
sible to go to ruin, and receiving the treatment of an an- 
imal the laborer was content to live the life of an animal. 
Hence the peasants became for their lords alike a spring 
of moral rottenness and agricultural ruin. 

We have a poem from Chamisso which the modern 
reader would probably believe to be merel5^ a creation 
of the poet's imagination. The noble landlord over- 
hears an old peasant woman pray that God may give 
her gracious master a long life. Conscious that he has 
not earned the love of his peasants he asks in astonish- 
ment: what causes her to pray so earnestly that he may 



INTRODUCTION. 11 

live long-? She replies: "Necessity teaches prayer; we 
had once eight cows in our possession; your gracious 
grandfather took the best one from us for himself, and 
when 3^our gracious father succeeded him he took two 
more, and when you yourself, most gracious lord, suc- 
ceeded him you took four, and when your son succeeds 
you he is certain to take the very last cow and so I beg 
earnestly, most gracious lord, that our gracious lord 
may live very long for necessity teaches prayer." This 
is no fancy picture for everywhere a patriarchal absolu- 
tion prevailed that the reforms of Stein and Hardenburg 
could not greatly better. 

These emancipation edicts born of the spirit of the age, 
to which Stein bore rather the relationship of adyocate 
than of author, proclaimed the abolition of serfdom and 
the unshackling of the serf from the clod, the "abolition 
of the caste inland" by permitting buerger and peasant 
to hold real estate and gave to every class of citizen, even 
the nobility, the right to choose an occupation. Seeley 
says with some show of justice that the last two provi- 
sions are a sort of Magna Carta to the Prussians, but 
even these became practically operative at a much later 
date while the first stands as a monument to the im po- 
tency of revolution by proclamation or evolution by 
edict. 



HISTORY POLITICAL OF EUROPE FROM 1815 

TO 1850. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE NATUKE OF HISTORY — THE RULERS OF THE GREAT 
NATIONS AFTER THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA. 



The period from the Fall of Napoleon I. to the Fall of 
Napoleon III. is an era almost unknown to American 
students who imagine alwa3's either the Europe of the 
Middle Ag-es or the Europe of Napoleon, but, it is an 
era vastly important, for modern historj^; that is to say 
political history, in the true sense of the term, begins 
after the fall of that genius of war and politics who be- 
strode the world and in his shadow made even the great 
men of his time appear as but pygmies. Although 
this period produced no Napoleon to equal the little Cor- 
sican, it is not without characters of historic and com- 
manding interest, for it begins with the swayof Metter- 
nich and ends with that of Bismark. It marks the rise 
of Italy and Prussia and the fall of Austria and France. 
It has fewer wars than perhaps any other period of his- 
tory of similar length for the first fifty j-ears of its 
course and more triumphs of peace and progress. 

There are so many points of view that seek to pass 
themselves off as History, that it is important to note 
some things that History is not. 

It is not Sociology. 

The study of society is very entrancing and has a 
field of its own from men in masses to men in classes. 
It is rem.otely kin to the History of civilization, but the 
theme of History is not the relation of man to his fellow 
man. 

It is not Political Economy. 

That deals with the production and use of wealth, with 
the acquisition, circulation and consumption of goods. 
Whatever thev mav do in tlie future, Labor and Capital, 



14 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

Progress and Poverty, Dives and Lazarus have not yet 
made History. Neither the striig-gle, nor the outcome 
of the strug-gle, between Russia and Japan will be due 
to the fact that one lives on millet cakes and the other 
on rice. Lamprecht and the Leipziger school take a 
very narrow view of history when they attempt to view 
it from the corner of a cabbage patch. Sauer kraut is 
g-reat in its effects, but not as a maker of history. It 
seems to be very enticing to some Americans to try to 
explain all things by some simple standard of measure- 
ment like the annual output of potatoes. 

It is not the mere record of wars and battles. 

When Green made his announcement that his "His- 
tor^^ of England" should not consist of mere drum and 
trumpet stories he made a very fascinating statement 
destined to endless iteration from historical poll par- 
rots, but certainly any history so called that ignored 
wars and rumors of wars would fall into the Scylla of 
Sociology on the one hand or the Chary bdis of Political 
Economy on the other. History is a record of wielded 
power; as to how that power is wielded is a matter of 
secondary importance; diplomacy and war are its in- 
struments; that is diplomacy in a narrow sense; in a 
higher sense war is only the instrument of diplomacy; 
the general, the servant of the statesman. 

Concretely History is the record of the struggle of 
the great powers of the world against other. Conse- 
quently what is merely local or individual is not history. 
"True history must have two characteristics: Univer- 
sality and Objectivity." So taught Ranke, the Master. 

The history of a country is the record of that coun- 
try's use of power. A country's yalue for history is 
the measure of its ability to use that power. That 
power is diplomacy backed by force; the weight of the 
sword which Brennus-like it must be able to cast into 
the scale. 

Internally the history is the record of the attempt to 
lay hand on the wires of diploraacy and the hilt of the 



NATURE OF HISTORY— RULERS AFTER CONGRESS OF VIENNA. 15 

sword; the record of parties and partisanship. In an 
absolute monarchy it centers around the throne and 
smacks strongly of intrigue. Whoever should attempt 
to g-ive the history of ancient Egypt or modern Russia 
and pay no attention to the court or to war would suc- 
ceed about as well as if one should attempt to palm off 
the reports of the Department of Agriculture as the 
History of the United States. As in an autocracy the 
kernel of history is to be sought in the circle of the fa- 
yorites and the powers behind the curtains and behind 
the thrones, so in a constitutional monarchy like that of 
England the focus is in the cabinet and ministerial re- 
sponsibility; while in a republic it is to be found in Con- 
gress and at the polls. Sociological and economic con- 
ditions then have historical value for the autocracy only 
in so far as they limit the sum of mone}^ or the sum of 
men to be obtained by an absolute ruler, and in a con- 
stitutional government only in so far as they lead to the 
building and success of parties. A famine, for instance, 
may or maj^ not be an event with which history need 
concern itself. The Irish famine, which caused the 
repeal of the Corn Law and the change of party in Eng- 
land with the corresponding change of policy, is of 
transcendent importance; while an Indian famine that 
causes the death of ten times as many persons, may as 
far as history is concerned, be ignored. Modern His- 
tory is then externally, practically, diplomacy with the 
soft voice of Jacob but with the hairy sinewy hand of 
Esau that holds a naked two-mouthed sword; internally 
it is tlie story of parties and partisanship. 

The great nations of the earth are the "powers" just- 
ly so called, their constellations and dispersions, their 
perihelion and concussion, their paths and orbits, their 
rising and setting form the theme of history. 

Only the great powers count. 

In the Middle Ages there were but two great powers: 
The Holy Roman Empire, and the Holy Catholic Church. 
With the time of the Reformation new powers arose. 



16 FOLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

The marriagfe of Ferdinand and Isabella united Spain, 
the marriag-e of Maximilian and Mar}^ the daughter of 
Charles the Bold of Burg-undy united Austria with Bur- 
g-undy, Flanders and the Netherlands, and when the 
daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, Joanna the half wit- 
ted, married the son of Maximilian and Mary, their son 
Charles combined all these domains with his vast pos- 
sessions by discovery and conquest in the new world 
and was elected Emperor of the Germans with feudal 
and hereditaria claims on Italy. A new power had aris- 
en that threatened to overshadow the world and forced 
France and Eng-land, the Pope, the Protestants and 
the unspeakable Turk to form alliances against this big-- 
oted Catholic emperor because his power was too great. 
The controversies between the House of Valois and the 
House of Hapsburg- is the key to the history of Europe 
for centuries, and not the fortuitous question of Prot- 
estantism or Catholicism. In the Seventeenth Century 
England and the Netherlands became world powers as 
did for a little while Sweden under Gustavus Adolphus 
and Oxenstierna. 

The Nineteenth Centurj^ dawned with Napoleon 
overshadowing: the world with the inevitable result that 
the world was coalesced ag-ainst him exactly as it once 
coalesced ag-ainst Charles V. His downfall meant the 
re-self-assertion of the smaller powers everywhere. 
After a few j^ears England and Russia, France and 
Austria held each other in equilibrium. The days of 
Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and even Spain as 
g-reat powers were numbered. In the third quarter of 
the century Prussia and Ital.Y asserted themselves as 
world powers, and in the last quarter the United States 
and Japan. Since the beg-inning- of modern times, then, 
historyisdetermined by the "Lawof the constellations". 
That law is two fold and may be briefly stated thus: 

I. History is made b3^ the great powers. 

II. The smaller powders can only come into being-, 
preserve themselves, or become great pov/ers when the 



NATURE OF HISTORY— RULERS AFTER CONGRESS OF VIENNA. 17 

constellations of the great powers are favorable to their 
so doing;. As to coming into being, they are sometimes 
created by the great powers. Napoleon not only sliced 
empires and made boundary lines to suit himself, , but 
changed duchies to arch-duchies (Baden) and arch- 
duchies and electorates to kingdoms in order to change 
enemies into allies and make buffer states against his 
enemies. Thus in Germany the electors of Hanover, 
Saxony and Bavaria, and the Duke of Wuertemburg be- 
came kings by the grace of Napoleon. 

The antagonism between Austria and France allowed 
Savoy and Piedmont to become a kingdom. 

Russia and England hold each other in a state of 
equilibrium and allow the sick man of Europe to outlive 
all his neighbors. 

So long as Austria, Prussia and Russia remained at 
enmity Poland could maintain itself, but once let them 
agree and it is licked from the map, divided, parceled 
out. 

Servia maintains a precarious existence until either 
Austria or Russia shall become so enfeebled that the 
other may lick it up, benevolently assimilate it. 
Switzerland, alone, hid among the Alps like a bear in its 
mountain lair and commanding the pathways of the na- 
tions, is enabled to preserve a measure of freedom, but 
the rule is, that only when the great powers hold each 
other at bay can the little powers grow. This law is so 
mathematically certain that the rise of any country may 
be expressed in the terms of an equation: 

France against Austria equals the rise of Prussia. 

France against England equals the rise of the United 
States. 

Prussia against Austria equals the rise of Italy. 

The equation is inevitable and lest new powers arise 
the powers that be seek to prevent the overweight of 
any one and the destruction of the equilibrium. 

Now it was exactly the crime of Napoleon that he had 
destroyed this sacred equilibrium and studded the map 



18 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

of Europe with a milky way of new born powers, stars 
of the second magnitude, that followed his fortunes like 
the tail of a fiery comet. So the powers forgot their an- 
imosities until they had thrust this invader of their or- 
bits into the blackness of darkness forever. 

Our curtain rises on the stage of Europe from which 
Napoleon has made his exit, leaving behind him the 
wreck of matter and the crash of worlds. From out 
the chaos of Waterloo and the wrangles of the Congress 
of Vienna rises the new world of parties and partisan- 
ship. Our task is none other than to show how the 
countries of the Continent provided themselves with 
constitutions. 

The stage presents a sad picture. In France the 
absolute monarchy had fallen before the battle cries of 
freedom and equality and many privileges of the clergy 
and nobility had disappeared forever, but the attempt 
to ground in the the new order of things, a new order 
of life for the people, had failed. Under Napoleon the 
French had exchanged an unbridled freedom for an 
unbridled dictatorship and against the Empire there 
had arisen within all the vanquished political sects and 
parties in France itself, just as the nations of the earth 
had leagued themselves without against the Empire. 
The enemies of the Revolution who had vainly expected 
from its tamer the return of their legimate rights joined 
with the enthusiastic followers of liberty and egalitr, 
who saw the fruits of their victory appropriated by the 
usurper and dictator and as enemies inside joined 
themselves with the subjected nations who, encouraged 
by the example of Spain, had risen in the response to 
the cry of nationality. But as soon as the dictator was 
overthrown all the ways of external powers and inter- 
nal parties diverged as they had nothing in common 
save hate of Napoleon and in place of the comradeship 
of allies there rose up the internicene strife of former 
confederates. 

Chief among these erstwhile internal allies were the 



NATURE OF HISTORY— RULERS AFTER CONGRESS OF VIENNA. 19 

"Leg-itimists" who in the revolution had lost property 
and privilege. 

Their leaders vs^ere the princes, the church, the nobili- 
ty; their desire was to push back the hands on the clock 
of time and bring back the status quo of the ante-rev- 
olutionary period. Akin to them was the shool of the 
"Romanticists". It looked to the Middle Ag-es for its 
ideals in art, poetry, speech, rhetoric, constitutions, laws 
and history and inclined strongly toward the Roman 
Church for its religion. In politics deeply conserva- 
tive but also national, it formed in this respect only a 
nexus between the legitimists and the liberals. 

The "Liberals", although they numbered in their ranks 
those tending to cosmopolitanism, finally recognized as 
their task in all countries in Europe the problem of 
uniting with the principle of nationality alawful freedom 
and equalit}^ or the building up of separate loj-alnation- 
alities on the foundation of constitutional g-overnment. 

This feeling- was stronger perhaps everywhere else 
than in Germany where the people seemed to be con- 
tent to fall back bound in the hands of their petty kings 
and princelings and resume without murmur the veg-e- 
table life of pre-Napoleonic days. Indeed it seemed 
for awhile that worn out b}' the dead weariness of the 
long struggle all the peoples were with one voice ready 
to give up their ideals and submit themselves to the 
guidance of their rulers, who for their part hailed the 
period as the return of the golden Age and complacently 
assumed the patriarchal attitude of fathers of their peo- 
ples. 

What constituted their fitness for the position? It 
will be instructive to glance at their characters and 
qualifications. Perhaps the best of them was Alexan- 
der the Russian Czar. As ruler he lived in the shadow 
of a crime. His path to the throne lay over the assassi- 
nated corpse of his father Paul I. It is doubtful if he 
was particeps criminis to the murder before the act, but 
he had reaped the fruits of that act and rewarded the 



20 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

murderers, with the result that he lived his life out 
with the idea of an expiation owed to heaven and be- 
came melancholy, fanatic, mystical, suffering- underthe 
lashing- of a conscience that made him sometimes soft, 
tender, benevolent, sometimes timid, suspicious and 
g-ruff. He had experienced the extremes of fortune: of 
evil,at AusterlitzandFriedland; of good, at Moscow and 
Leipzig. 

He believed himself to have suffered under the chas- 
tising rod of a God who punished j'^et forgave. He was 
incapable of a malicious despotism for he felt continual- 
ly over him a higher power that he could neither deny or 
laugh away. He deeply longed for a rest for his soul that 
he could scarcely believe himself to attain. He was a 
patron of the Bible-societies and a disciple of the mysti- 
cism of his time. A real friend of peace and a decided 
enemy of revolution, longing to see the peoples of Eu- 
rope governed wisely and well and ready to recommend 
•onstitutions or cannon as seemed to fit the exigencies 
or the case, but he prescribed the cannon for an erring 
nation as an indulgent but exasperated father would a 
switch to a disobedient child, while statiding- ready to 
reward it vv^ith a constitution as a new toy if it would on- 
ly consent to be good. His life long he held opinions 
that contradicted each other and the position he held. 
Like the Czar of our own day he earnestly sought to 
wear over the uniform of military despotism the white 
feathers of the dovo of peace. 

Francis H., Emperor of Austria, "Our good Empe- 
ror Francis", longed j^et more earnestly for rest than 
did the Czar, but his desire was not rest for the soul 
but for the body. He never lost the persuasion that it 
was easier to persecute and banish than it was to argue. 

A perfect egotist, he had earned from his uncle, the 
Emperor Joseph, while still a child the sobriquet of a 
little spoilt mamma bab5\ 

He knew no higher moral motive than the desire to pre- 
serve his own person in peace and comfort. Ambition, 



NATURE OF HISTORY— RULERS AFTER CONGRESS OF VIENNA. 21 

love of country, sense of duty, made no impression on 
him. His over-mastering: desire was not to be annoyed. 

Whoever brought new ideas into circulation he re- 
g"arded as his personal enemy for he was quite content 
with thing's as they were. 

"There are now new ideas in progress," said he in 
1821 to the Laibacher professors, "ideas which I can 
not now endorse and can never come to endorse; stick 
to the old; our forefathers were well off therewith and 
why should not we be; I do not need learned men but 
good citizens. It is j^our task to make such of the 
young people; whoever serves me must learn what I 
command and whoever can't do that or comes to me 
with new ideas can either go away of himself or I will 
send him off." He on one occasion begged pardon of a 
high officer because he had supposed him to be the au- 
thor of a military work. He had a disregard for total- 
ities combined with a comical genius for detail. The 
court council of war determined the strength of the 
army, but no individual man could be excused from ser- 
vice without the matter being laid personally before 
him. 

His chief delight was to give gracious audience to 
swarms of curious and admiring visitors. On a visit 
to Italy he received twenty thousand. It is needless to 
say that this narrow minded coxcomb was the beloved 
of his people. This popular emperor brought the spy 
and tattle system to fullest bloom. The violation of 
letters sent through the post was such a matter of 
course that Stein wrote to Gneisenau, "I received your 
letter through the Austrian post and so without any 
doubt, opened," while Hagenau said, "It is sufficient to 
recall that one is in Austria in order to lose all desire to 
write or receive letters," and the minister from Tus- 
cany refused to sign a postal treaty with a country that 
so ruthlessly violated the securities of the mails. The 
police became ever more powerful; their supervision 
extended alike over small and great; they determined 



22 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

the installation of professors and the residence of arch- 
dukes, and drew a Chinese wall around Austria that ex- 
cluded with equal impartiality foreig-n bathers, travel- 
lers, universities and science, and still the "Good Em- 
peror Francis" remained the beloved of his people who 
demonstrated yet again the truth of the proverb that in 
Vienna any revolution could be side-tracked with a few 
thousand baked cookies. 

Frederick William III. of Prussia was also the be- 
loved of his people. A love g-rounded in sympathy for 
was he not the innocent victim of the rough and bar- 
barian Corsican; the husband of the beautiful and 
g-racious queen Louise; the founder of the University of 
Berlin; the author of the "Call to my people" that had 
roused them to throw off the French 3^oke; the founder 
of the Land Guard; the friend and patron of the popular 
public school system; the destroyer of many of the au- 
no3nng" tariff boundaries; the conscientious worker; the 
benevolent prince; the friend of the citizen and of 
the church. His relation to the land was rather 
a personal than a political one. His character is 
in some respects to compare with that of Louis 
XVI. of France. The same good natured and gra- 
cious incompetence, the same inability to meet 
a crisis, the same ignorance of the needs and 
demands of his own time. Deeply pious and sincerely 
religious he wished to play the role of father beneficent 
to his people. He combined theological and militar}'- 
tendencies without possession of real ability' in either 
line. He was always uncomfortable in the presence of 
men of intelligence and power and em harassed even in 
the presence of his own ministers. Although totally 
without the ability to govern, the personal characteris- 
tics that made him loved kept the world from falling in 
ruins about his head and the people put up with his 
weaknesses and his perjured promises to give them a 
constitution as they would have borne with the faults of 
a beloved senile parent. From this brief sketch of 



NATURE OF HISTORY— RULERS AFTER CONGRESS OF VIENNA. 23 

their respective characters let us turn to a study of the 
relationship of the three rulers. 

Between Frederick William and Alexander there had 
existed a real friendship since that November night in 
the year 1805, when in the garrison church at Potsdam 
at the g-rave of Frederick the Great, the beautiful Louise 
had united their hands over that hero's Sarcophagus 
and had caused them to swear an eternal friendship. 
Tilsit and the Prussian alliance with Napoleon against 
Mozcow had almost shattered it, but companionship in 
the final campaig^n against the Corsican had restored 
it and the deliberations of the Congress of Vienna had 
made it stronger than ever. This bond was still fur- 
ther strengthened by the betrothal of the king's daugh- 
ter, Chai'lotte, to the arch-duke Nicholas. 

There were no such bonds of inner friendship uniting 
these two to the emperor Francis who therefore only 
reluctantly entered on an alliance based in sentimental 
grounds, proposed by the Czar and urged by him and 
i the king of Prussia. However on the plain of Vertus 
Mnear Paris on September 26, 1815, on the occasion of a 
■great review of troops the Holy Alliance was entered 
into. It was supposed to be based on the Christian Reli- 
gion and on the practice of the Golden Rule and declared 
that the respective peoples of the three rulers were 
branches of one and the same nation (Prussia's king 
Protestant, Alexander Greek Catholic, Francis Roman 
Catholic) and that as the predestined representatives of 
Providence they would rule their peoples. That the rela- 
tions of the states to each other as well as their inner gov- 
ernment were to be regulated by the rubricsofChristian- 
itj^ grounded in justice, love and peace. The kings 
should live like brothers and rule their subjects like fa- 
thers. It was the programme of a new era and other 
princes were invited to join them. Of course such an 
agreement received the prompt condemnation of the 
Pope who announced that he w^s the head of Christian- 
ity and that there had always been a union of all princes 



24 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

under his sovereig-nty, A politician like Metternich 
ridiculed it even while he seemed to agree to it and said 
that this loud sounding nothing was never even men- 
tioned afterwards in the deliberations of the Cabinets; 
and yet it was the basis on which the Congresses of 
Aachen and Verona were subsequently held. The king- 
of France and other rulers adopted its fundamental 
principles and its influence was great enough to stifle 
the fires of liberalism in Naples and Spain. 



CHAPTER 11. 



THE ROMANCE NATIONS. 



The condition of France was very isolated. From 
the gfuardian of the nations she had sunk to their ward, 
from their dictator to their protege, one might almost 
say prisoner. 

Many of her border fortresses she was obliged to 
cede to her neighbors, Phillippeville and Marienburg to 
the newly created kingdom (it had been a republic) of 
the Netherlands, Saarlouis and Saarbruecken to Prus- 
sia, Landau to Bavaria, and the balance of Savoy to the 
kingdom of Sardinia. The north and east frontiers of 
France, with seventeen fortresses, were to remain for 
for a time, perhaps five years, in the possession of 150,000 
soldiers of the allied troop sat the cost of France. She 
must besides this pay 700,000,000 francs as the costof the 
war and all the art treasures gathered by Napoleon 
from all the countries of Europe, and not demanded 
back at the first peace, must now be restored. But 
she was not obliged to yield to Hardenberg's demand 
to restore a part of Elsace and Lorriane. Metz and 
Strassburg were still hers. 

France lay exhausted. In the last ten years she had 
lost two and one half millions of her sons on the battle 
fields, and now her expelled kings were forced back on 
her. It is true the will of the czar forced the Bourbon 
to promise a constitutional government, but the 
attempt was quickly made to reduce the "charter" to 
a dead letter, an attempt aided by a parliament so ser- 
vile that it earned the name of "chambre introuvable." 
The only task of the king and his ministers was to 
hold the servility of the parliament within the bounds 
of decenc3\ 

Louis XVIII was by nomeansaliberal, although in the 
early days of theRevolution he had made sheep's-eyes at 
liberal principles, for he was a Bourbon. He belonged to 



26 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

the family that had learned nothing- and forgotten noth- 
ing-, but he had a very vivid memory of the humiliations 
of the days of his exile and had no wish to again eat the 
bread of banishment and if a mild form of constitution- 
al g-overnment could avert this danger, he was ready to 
j'ield to it as a necessary evil. But clumsy in body and 
spirit, he was best satisfied with those ministers who 
demanded the least sacrifices and exertions from him 
personallj'. 

Immediately on his return he had taken as his minis- 
ters the turncoat Talleyrand and M. Fouche. Although 
they were thoroughly hated by the Royalists and sus- 
pected by the foreign powers, it was believed it was 
necessary to have them to conciliate the parties and more 
especially to use them for the dirty work of persecuting 
the Bonapartists, but the result of the elections showed 
that the3^ were not necessary even as a buffer ministry, 
and on Alexander's advice, duke Richelieu was made 
chief minister. Richelieu was at heart inclined to adopt 
a fair]3^ liberal policy and to preserve the Constitution, 
but the Republican and Bonapartist parties were with- 
out influence or power at the polls, while the extreme 
Leg-itimists, the so-called Ultras, had alike the ear and 
sympathy of the king and of the fickle Parisian popu- 
ulace. Their leader was the Count of Artois, the first 
emig-rant of the Revolution, the brother and later the 
successor of the king-. His residence at the pavilion 
Marsan was the focus and rallying- point of all the re- 
actionaries. The leader of the party in the ministry 
was Baublanc, the one time Jacobine, then Bonapartist, 
now extreme Ultra. All the family of the king belong-ed 
to this party, who wished to roll back the pages of his- 
tory and blot out from France every trace of the Revo" 
lutionand the Empire. They brought about the shoot- 
ing of Marshall Ney and of Colonel Labodoyere, pro- 
nounced sentence of death on the exiles and sent many 
into banishment, burnt the pictures of Napoleon (once 
also a live eagle) and turned many civil officials out of 



THE ROMANCE NATIONS. 27 

office, in one department as many as 700. No one whose 
political views were the subject of suspicion, could count 
on personal freedom. It was said that one-half of 
France had obtained the right according- to its own 
pleasure toimprison theother half, rioters were punished 
by court martial and over those lands of the Church 
and Aristocracy which had been confiscated in the Rev- 
olution and had often perhaps chang^ed hands since then 
and were now in the possession of innocent purchasers, 
hung- the Damocles sword of another confiscation. The 
state religion was declared to be the Roman Catholic, 
the clergy, although more ultra-montane than ever, were 
favored in every way, the streets were filled with pro- 
cessions led hj, the gray monarch and members of his 
family and court carrying candles or escorting relics. 
Artois became head of a strong Catholic society; cruel 
persecutions broke out against Protestantsin the South- 
ern provinces of France; for Bonapartists, Revolution- 
ists and Liberals yawned alike the prison doors. By the 
end of August, 1815, there had been 70, 000 arrests; every- 
thing was under the police spy system. Marshall Mai- 
son of Paris boasted that he had hanged inside of three 
months over 20,000 people. The result was inevitable. 
There was dissatisfaction in the inactiye and humiliat- 
ed army. All other parties were drawn together by 
common danger, and conspiracies and riots became 
every day matters. 

In order to preserve unchanged the servile parlia- 
ment an attempt was made by Baublanc in 1816 to so 
alter the Constitution that instead of one-fifth of the 
representatives in Parliament going out each year, 
the entire body should be elected for a period of five 
years and all should enter and go out of office together. 
The king, alarmed at his growing unpopularity, vetoed 
the plan, dismissed Baublanc, dissolved the Parliament, 
and warned by the repeated admonitions of Wellington 
gave Richelieu more liberal colleagues. But more ef- 
fective than the warnings of Wellington was a personal 



28 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

letter containing; the same advice from the Czar who 
gave the king-, as a rew^ard for tractability, a note from 
the great powers, (2-10-1817) which g-ranted the long- 
desired diminution of the army of occupation to 30,000 
men, a measure to which the reluctant Welling-tonhadat 
last g-iven his consent. This saved the king-, and saved the 
Liberals. The new election g-ave a more moderate Par- 
liament, while a new election law gave to every citizen 
who was thirty j^ears old, and who paid 300 francs di- 
rect taxes, the right of suffrage. The liberal Minister 
Decazes was added to the Cabinet and there seemed to 
have arrived for exhausted France the possibility of 
rest and recovery. It was also manifest that there 
were some things, more than flotsam and jetsam which 
Waterloo had not swept away, left as beneficent memo- 
rials of the revolution. Judgeships might no longer be 
bought and sold and inherited. Law codes were syste- 
matic and universal. A national system of education 
remained. 

The peasants were owners of the soil. Taxation was 
equalized and the feudal life with its ienqualities and 
burdens could not be resurrected. Preferment in the 
civil service, the navy and the army was open to men 
of merit. The church had been reorganized and its 
lands confiscated. The clerg-y were salaried officers of 
the State. The merchant gilds had lost their monop- 
olistic rights. All Frenchmen were equal before the 
law, and Frenchmen had penetrated tvery country of 
Europe as evangels of democracy both of the revolution- 
ary and imperial type, and had carried the idea of equal 
legal rights and the workings of the Code Napoleon v/ith 
them. Italy, Savoy, the Confederation of the Rhine, 
Westphalia, Belgium and even Spain could never entirely 
forget the French legal system. Never again could the 
doors be closed against ability by those "twin jailors of 
I the daring soul, low birth and iron fortune". Massena 
had risen from the ranks to be alvlarshal of the Empire. 
The execution of Murat did not blind the people lo Iiis 



THE ROMANCE NATIONS. 29 

dazzling- rise from waiter toGenerai of Cavalry, Marshal 
of France and King- of Naples, while the provincial law- 
yer's son Bernadotte remained hereditary king- of 
Sweden. 

PORTUGAL. 

Here the deposed house of Brag-anza had been nomi- 
nally restored to the throne, but the queen Maria was 
crazy and her son John who ruled as Prince Reg-ent un- 
til March, 1816, and then ascended the throne as John 
VI. continued to reside in Brazil and all actual power 
was in the hand of the Englishman Beresford, who, as 
commander-in-chief of the army, by his arbitrariness 
and favoritism, did much to destroy the popularity Eng- 
land had enjoyed in Portugal. The trade of Portugal 
and of Brazil was nevertheless turned toward England, 
and conspiracies against Beresford in the army and 
elsewhere were put down with an iron hand. 

SPAIN. 

It Was the pertinacious resistance and guerrilla war- 
fare of the inhabitants of the peninsula against Napo- 
leon and Joseph that had encouraged the other nations 
of Europe to revolt, but she was to reap no fruits from 
her victories. Her territories were not enlarged nor 
her condition bettered. The Spain of that day consist- 
ed of two great political parties who had nothing in com- 
mon save hate of the usurper. On one side was the 
clerg-y, who held fast with passionate devotion to all the 
rotten institutions of the pre-Napoleonic period. On the 
other the Liberals, who saw all salvation in the princi- 
ples of the French Revolution and who took as their 
banner the remarkably republican constitution of 1812, 
the work of the Cortez of Cadiz which they held to as to 
a Gospel, and had sworn to alter in no point for the next 
eight years. Both parties were of about equal strength 
and although the Liberals had thegreatest numbers, the 
Clericals had the strong support of Spanish traditions 
and now demanded back the Inquisition, and the 



30 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

Jesuits, press-censorship, and freedom from taxation for 
the clerg-y. The man who was supposed to steer be- 
tween these two parties was Ferdinand VII. who had 
just returned from French captivity, an utter incompe- 
tent, even as measured by the standard of the sover- 
eigns of Europe. Cruel and cowardly, dull and pleasure 
loving-, lazy and suspicious, he did not possess a trace of 
even one of the characteristics that were necessary in 
order to satisfactorily solve the problems that Jay be- 
fore him. The idea of intermediating- between the par- 
ties was something that did not even occur to him. He 
simply cast himself unresisting into the arms of the 
Clericals who at once demanded through their press or- 
gan the gallows without right of speech for all Liberals. 
The persecutions of the Liberals were carried on by the 
Clerical secret society of the Avenging Angel, an or- 
ganization as bloody as the Danites of the Mormon 
church. 

The king was greeted on his return with the most 
subservient loyalty. 

The plazas in the principal towns had been named af- 
ter the Constitution. The people now tore up the me- 
morial stones that contained the name and shouted 
"death to the Constitution and to Liberty. Long live 
our absolute king." Hume says that the strange and 
awful cry "Hurrah for chains" was also heard. The 
regency awaited with ox-like stolidity the return of the 
king and took no measure to protect itself or its ^'./orl:. 
Such blind fatuity received its due reward. Through 
the influence of the Marquis of Mataflorida the king did 
away with the Constitution of 1812 before he even en- 
tered his capital of Madrid, and all liberal members of 
the regency, ministers and party leaders v/ere, without 
anj' ground being assigned, confined in cloisters and 
fortresses for six or eight years. All civil oiiicials who 
had taken places from the Cortez were deposed; all par- 
tisans of king Joseph were banished with twenty hours 
notice, and more than 10,000 of thera deprived of prrp- 



THE ROMANCE NATIONS. 31 

erty and fatherland. 

Early in 1816 there began to rot in the cells of the in- 
quisition over 50,000 prisoners. The innocent pur- 
chasers of the confiscated church property were not 
onl3' deprived of it, but were made to pay a money fine 
in addition. Although Vae army and navy were neglect- 
ed so that according- to official report three marine offi- 
cers died of starvation in Ferrol; although taxes were 
increased, and countless confiscations filled the treasu- 
ry, it was all squandered by the court and in addition 
Ferdinand had in five years accumulated debts to the 
amount of three milliard reals. The king, fully in the 
power of a sv/arm of court favorites, would tolerate no 
good minister and changed ministers thirty times in 
six years. He was in bad repute with the other powers, 
Alexander alone exercising influence on him for a while. 
The Russian minister belonged to his camarilla or back 
stairs cabinet in which low born and ignorant knaves ex- 
ercised absolute if temporarj'^ power as royal fayorites. 
His colonies in America ^^ere in revolt and could not 
be conquered, and he was obliged, moreover, to cede 
Florida to the United States in 1819. Wide circles 
glowed with hate and contempt of such a government, 
the army was without coherence; the educated and cul- 
tured people powerless; the land was filled with con- 
spiracies and brigandage, and conspirator and brigand 
atoned on the rack and gallows for their temerity, for 
although the land was like a volcano rumbling with sub- 
terranean fires and belching forth eruption after erup- 
tion, yet the dynasty did not fall, for it was sure of the 
support of the clergy and the clergy controlled the 
rabble and the vnob, 

ITALY. 

With the fall of Napoleon Italy crumbled and became 
once more what Matternich sneeringly called it, merely 
"a geographical conception." But the Corsican had 

given it, for a while, a season of good government and 



32 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

had left the memory of a magic name, — the "kingdom 
OF ITALY." The two best g-overnments left in Italy 
were those of Parma, where the Grand Duchess Marie 
Louise, the wife of Napoleon, was in power, and Tus- 
cany, where Ferdinand III. through his minister Fos- 
sombrone, although he did away with the French inno- 
vations of good laws, yet gave fairly good laws in their 
place. In the other states a blind reaction ruled. The 
church state under Pope Pius VII. went blithely in ad- 
vance. Pius restored the Jesuits and the Inquisition and 
permitted against the Free Masons the use of the rack. 
All over the world the Papacy sought to weave again 
the nets that had been broken by the revolution. The 
blind hate of the Pope was not permitted to injure these 
delicately spun nets, for in the person of Cardinal Con- 
salvi, Rome had a finely cultured and v/orld experienced 
man at the head of foreign affairs, Vv'ho had no inclina- 
tion to extreme steps, but was rather inclined to win 
by concessions as he won the Prussian (Protestant am- 
bassador) Niebuhr. But during Consalvi's absence at 
the council of Vienna, the Reaction celebrated under 
his representative Pacca its triumphs. The patrimo- 
nial courts were restored. The secret societies, espe- 
cially the Masons, were declared criminal and illegal and 
recklessly persecuted. At one stroke 2,500 Cloisters 
were reopened. The lighting- of the streets and vacci- 
nation were abolished as being E^rench institutions; all 
the better offices Vv^ere filled continual!}^ and solely with 
the clerg5r; brigandage blossomed in to fullest fllower. 
In Sept. there were fifty-seven highway assassins on 
whose head the police had set a price. In many prov- 
inces affairs bordered on open anarchy and the moral 
and material conditions sank to as deep a depth as in 
any state on the Peninsula. 

SARDINIA. 

In Sardinia the reaction ruled as blindly as at Rome. 
Victor Emanuel I. was good nalured, vv'ithont v;ill or 



THE ROMANCE NATIONS. 33 

character, narrow-minded, pious, superstitious, andhyp- 
ocritical. He celebrated his return by declaring- void, 
in May 1814, the entire French leg-islation, untroubled 
by the helpless leg-al confusion that ensued thereby. 
Some of his zealous followers destroyed the Botanical 
Garden in Turin because the French had planted it, 
while another wished to pull down the bridge over the 
Po because Napoleon had built it. And still a third se- 
riously proposed to close all the passes of Mt. Cenis that 
these highways of the nations might fall into disuse be- 
cause the hated Corsican had traveled over them. Five 
thousand French were summarily ejected from the land 
and the usual Italian regime of government ensued, but 
the nobility and people had enjoyed a taste of good g;ov- 
ernraent, of nationality, and of power that they never 
forgot a.nd that as good seed bore fruit in its season. 

Naples had the advap-tai:e that the French laws and 
institutions were retained, but the disadvantage that 
they fell into the hands of utterly incompetent adminis- 
trators. The pest of brigandage was greater even than in 
the Papal State itself : Naples became the El Dorado of all 
robbers and assassins. They were estimated in 1817 to 
number 30,000 and could onl5^ be combated by sub- 
sidizing- one band against another or by the historical 
Italian remedy of poison. General Amato at one time 
presented the government a bill of 2,000 ducats for poi- 
sons and poisonous mixtures — an account that should 
have made the ghosts of the Borgias smile. 

The Constitution in Sicily was abolished and 
King Ferdinand I. made an agreement with Austria 
that nothing was to be done that would not harmonize 
with the Austrian arrangements in Lombard y. So here 
also the same contempt v/as shown for liberal views and 
the hearts of liberals were estranged, although a strong 
party of Murat's followers still existed and was not to 
be despised in spite of the shooting of their king. The 
reactionaries behaved as if they had survived the day 
of judginent and held the claims of divine retribution 



34 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

to have become outlawed or nonsuited. The French had 
been driven out, but the taxes had not decreased and 
nowhere was a recompense offered for the appearance 
of national independence which had characterized the 
vice kingdom of Eug^ene and the independent monarchy 
of Murat. On the contrary Italy must be stigmatized 
as a mere "geographical idea." Its individual states were 
not even united by such an empty bond or rope of sand 
as united the German Confederation. Two of its prov- 
inces, the two most vigorous mentally and most mature 
politically, had merely exchanged French dominion for 
Austrian. Venice and Lombardy were united in name 
and given the title of the "Kingdom of Lombardy and 
Venice", and the Archduke Anton was made vice king, 
but not only was the land ruled directly from Venice 
but a custom's boundary and tariff wall was built be- 
tween its supposedly component parts. Austrian laws 
were introduced without regard to their fitness or with- 
out an}^ trimming or adaptation. Anton resigned in dis- 
gust after two years and his successor Archduke Rain- 
er was utterly' subservient to Austria, who ruled 
through police domination, and gave himself solely to the 
accumulation of money. This policy of foreign domina- 
tion did not have to endure long before it came to be a 
proverb in the mouth of the people that: "In Italy there 
are three evils, Germans, Typhoid, and Monkery." So 
the Vienna Congress marks the beginning rather than 
the end of Italy's period of revolution, and as there was 
for the battle no open lawfularena, the agitation withdrev/ 
itself to the shelter of secret societies. In both the rev- 
olutionar3^ and the reactionary camps these societies, 
resembling theAmericanKuklux, blossomed out, similar 
in organization to each other, but bearing many names 
such as Guelfs, Consistorials, Illuminators, Muratists, 
but by far the most important were the Sanfedisti and 
the Carbonari. The Sanfedisti were the organ of the 
ultramontane party and the Papacy and the tool of the 
monkish orders with headquarters in the papal state. 



THE ROMANCE NATIONS. 35 

Its only point of contact with the Carbonari was that it 
also w^as inimical to the Austrian dominion in Venice 
and Lombardy, but its ruling- thought was ever 
to secure the preponderance of the Church and to ex- 
terminate liberalism. They represented not national 
but solely hierarchical tendencies and their leader was 
that prince of the i-eactionaries the Cardinal Pacca. The 
g-reat revival of this society was the Carbonari (coalers) 
the origin of name is unknown, founded in 1807. In the 
French period, its goal had been the throwing off of the 
French yoke, it now became ameansof protectingthepro- 
ducing citizen class from its enemies above and below, a 
bulwark against robbers and Princes. In Naples the po- 
lice minister Prince Cannosa formed against them a 
monarchical opposition secret society out of discharged 
criminals and similar elements. It was called the Cal- 
derari (Kesselmacher), but as the enemies of the same 
opponent easily became friends of each other, there 
came to be unions and alliances formed between Carbo- 
nari and brigands, and near Naples it was sometimes 
hard to decide just where the footpad left off and the 
political conspirator began. 

In the other countries of Italy the society was cleaner 
but not so strong. Nevertheless there were within a 
a few years sixty thousand members in the Peninsula 
and numberless little insurrections betrayed the fire 
that smouldered beneath the ashes. 



CHAPTER ni. 



AUSTRIA. 



THE POSITION OF AUSTRIA UNDER METTERNICH IN EUROPEAN 
POLITICS AND CHARACTER SKETCH OF COUNT METTERNICH. 



Two things threatened Austria's position in Italy. 
The dissatisfaction of the populace and the influence 
that the Czar sought to exert there. Alexander was 
willing- if necessary to give every other country a con- 
stitutional government except his own. He had given 
a constitution to Poland, assured it to France and was 
willing to grant it to Italy, so that before the eye of 
Metternich there ever appeared the threatening appa- 
rition of a Russian Bourbon Alliance, for which there 
was sentiment in Naples. Austria is ethnologically and 
linguistically a general mixture, a conglomeration of in- 
congruous heterogenous incoherent and often warring- 
parts, composed of Germans and Italians, Tschechs 
(Bohemians), Poles, Magj^ars (Hungarians), Kroats, 
Roumanians and Routhens, Slavs and Moravians. Even 
today six languages are spoken in the Austrian Parlia- 
ment. For ethnic-national and liberal ideas toget abroad 
ill Austria meant nothing less than its disintegration. 
Austria presented just the opposite picture to Germany. 
In the latter, there were many peoples of thesame speech, 
traditions, manners and customs, loosely and ineffec- 
tively bound together. In Austria were many different 
and inimical nationalities closely united under a strong 
central despotic monarchy for which in 1817 Metter- 
nich created a common ministry of the Interior, except 
for Hungary which had its own Parliament and was 
altogether the most loosely tied-on member of the em- 
pire. But Hungary's Parliament, contrary to its con- 
stitution and laws, was not called together until 1825 
although Kaiser Francis sometimes protested that he 
loved the old constitution just as lie loved himself, and 



THE ROMANCE NATIONS. 37 

sometimes deplored in classical Latin, the parliamen- 
tary speech of Hungary, that the entire world had gone 
crazy and desired visionary Constitutions (Totus 
mundus stultizat et constitutiones imaginarias quaerit). 
The composition of the Austrian Parliament prevent- 
ed even the expectation of any real reform coming from 
it. The nobility and the clergy had on an average 
three-fourths of the seats. Only a very few cities were 
permitted any kind of representation and those that 
had any had a very imperfect one. The seven Mora- 
vian cities had, for example, altogether only one vote 
and the representatives of the lower Austrian cities 
had yotes, it is true, but were permitted to take no part 
in the deliberations or discussions. The parliament 
had really no other function than to meet on the ap- 
pointed day and express their satisfaction with the 
propositions of the government in a manner the most 
servilely obedient. Since it had to ratify everything 
anyhow it was found cheaper to dispense with delibera- 
tion and simply to say "yes" to every proposition. 
These propositions were always demands for more sol- 
diers and more taxes; reform laws were not eyen 
brought in. There was no attempt made at either so- 
cial or agricultural improvement. Austrian policy was 
the policy of the still-stand. Metternich had only one 
object — the preservation of the existing. Whatever is 
is right and ought not to be allowed to change. He con- 
tinually reiterated that the court ought to rule more and 
govern less. This system exactly suited the House of 
Hapsburg. Its dominions known as Austria were a con- 
glomeration of hereditary possessions, usually acquired 
as the result of fortunate marriages. Austria's matri- 
monial luck was expressed in a Latin couplet in the 
Middle Ages: 

"Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube! 

Quae dat Mars aliis, dat tibi regna Venus". 
Another point of strength and weakness was the close 
alliance with the Roman Catholic Church. 



38 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

The result of this "ruling-' ' was that Austria was rotting- 
at the heart and in time of peace going into bankruptcy. 
At the death of the Kaiser Francis the national debt had 
run up to seven hundred and fifty million gulden (agulden 
or florin about forty cents). The yearly interest on the 
debt had run up from five million in 1816 to twenty 
million a year in 1831. "While industrially the rest of 
Europe rose, Austria sank and rotted. There was no 
land leg-islation, nothing toward the abolition of peasant 
serfdom, nothing- toward the lessening of the body 
tax (poll tax) of the "obedience hellar", of the "riot shill- 
ing", of the "pennance hay", and the rest of the wonder- 
ful and wonderfully named taxes that the peasants had 
to pay. Nobody troubled himself as to what was to be 
the final outcome of such a system. As the Madame 
Pomparour had said "Apres nous le deluge", so 
Genz the clever secretary of Metternich comforted him- 
self with the frivolous saying^ "It will outlast Metter- 
nich and me." One thing however the Austrian states- 
men were clever enough to know, namely, that if this 
state of affairs was to continue in Austria then Austria 
must dominate Europe. Her policy must be the lux 
benigna for the rest of the world. Her policy and 
standing and principles must be dominant especially in 
the neighboring- lands, so while Austria had no active 
policy for the interior she had a very vigorous foreign 
policy. Especially did she give her most earnest atten- 
tion to hindering the constitutional reforms in Italy, in 
Germany, and in Russian Poland to which Alexander 
had promised a constitution. 

In all Germany Metternich was now followed as al- 
most a demi-god, he himself called himself a new Mes- 
siah come to forgive the sins of the smaller powers. 
Especially did Prussia fall absolutely under his influ- 
ence and for years was led by the nose as asses are. 
King, court, and diplomats of Prussia became mere ech- 
oes of Austrian policy and whenever Metternich took 
snuff the kins: of Prussia and all the rest of the German 



AUSTRIA— COUNT METTERNICH. 39 

princes sneezed. 

Who was this Metternich? Prince Clemens Lothar 
Metternich, was born in Coblenz on the Rhine in 1773 
and grew up under the impressions of the Rhinish 
border provinces. He was not especially studious or 
gifted. His University friends praised him for the 
three F's. He was, they said, fin, faux, fanfaron. In 
manner he was gfracious, affable and tactful, smooth, 
polished, clever, witty; a dandy in person, but mentally 
lazy. He constantly g^ave the impression of activity, 
had eyer something- glittering- on the surface to attract 
attention, but his entire wisdom consisted in following- 
the old Austrian policy of the preservation of the exist- 
ing-. His staff consisted of men like himself, often 
hig-hly talented, g-enerally lazy, usually unprincipled. 
Sanscrit, music and medicine found favor in his eyes, 
but modern science, theolojry and prog-ress were, owing- 
to his influence, halted at the frontier. He caused the 
libraries to report yearly a list of the books which the 
professors had taken out in order that he might keep 
track of their views. All strangers in the land were 
kept constantly under police supervision and neither 
artists like Horace Vernet nor statesman like Kapodis- 
tria nor princes like the crown prince Ludwig- from 
Bavaria were allowed to escape their attention. Like 
all statesmen of his time he put customs frontiers be- 
tween even the different parts of his own land. This 
was the man v/ho Vv'as the practical ruler of Austria, 
Chairman of Germany, Dictator of Northern Italy, and 
altogether the most influential man in all Europe. In 
his social life he was wholly an aristocrat. The son of a 
prince of the oldest empire of earth, wealthy in his own 
right, polished and easy and affable. In religion a patron 
of the Roman church. He was married in succession 
to three princesses of which the first was the daughter 
of the great statesman Kaunitz and the last the prin- 
cess Melanie all of whom loved him and all of whom he 
loved. Happy in his home life and enjoying the admi- 



40 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

ration of his family, he was yet the greatest entertainer 
of Europe. The balls, feasts, festivities, dancers, sing- 
ers, which he provided for the entertainment of the 
Congrress of Vienna, cost him fifty thousand dollars a 
day for expenses, and astounded the diplomats of 
Europe by their magnificence. 

As a statesman he was trained at Strassburg and at 
the courts of Dresden, Berlin, and Paris successively. 
He was the one man whom Napoleon could not brow- 
beat nor intimidate nor deceive. There was one thing- 
he hated consumingly, namely the "French Revolution" 
and the ideas and men it foisted on the world. His was 
the diplomatic genius that forever spun at the webs 
which finally entang^led the Corsican. 

The first part of his life was spent in combating the 
man who stepped into the world over the threshold of 
the French Revolution, and the second part in combat- 
ting the ideas to which the same great event gave birth. 
The man he deposed and overthrew, but the ideas final- 
ly overthrew and deposed him. He was always consist- 
ent with his own system and true to his own idea — the 
idea of conservatism. He hated the press because he 
conceived it to be essentially inimical to the monarchial 
principle. He hated the universities because he con- 
ceived them to be conducive to independence of thought 
and independence of thought led to independence of act 
and that was revolution. He caused the death of scores 
of innocent students and chained nearly every universi- 
ty in Europe. He urged the king of Prussia to sup- 
press the g-ymnasia as hotbeds of mischief and yet on 
the occasion of his visit to five universities in Germany 
he was received as a sort of God, the students following 
his carriage with shouts and cheers. 

The king of England and the czar of Russia embrac- 
ed him as an equal and ordered the same honors to be 
paid to him as to themselves. He exercised as abso- 
lute a control over the emperor of Austria as did Bis- 
mark, later, over the king of Prussia, but unlike Bis- 



ADSTRIA— COURT MHTTERKICH. 41 

mark he exercised it v/ithout friction, and again unlike 
Bismark and Stein his manners were polished and his 
voice gentle. He never g^ave way to anger, never be- 
trayed his feelings, never lost the power to form a cool 
and discriminating judgment because of his animosity. 
After the fall of Napoleon his chief aversions were 
Capod'Istria and the liberal English minister Canning. 
Pie fought against libraries and yet his own was one of 
the largest in Europe. He was opposed to Bible socie- 
ties and Bible reading and yet he himself read one or 
two chapters every day. He was defeated as to the 
loss of the duchy of Warsaw to Russia and of half of 
Saxony to Prussia and linallj^ by the deluge of liberal 
ideas all over Europe, aud 3'et for forty years he was 
one of the great figures of Europe. For forty years 
his word was the law of Germany, for forty years he 
moved Icings and princes and czars and emperors like 
puppets on a wire. For forty 3'ears all the cabinets 
were guided more or less 1)3' Iris advice and his advice 
Vv'as ab.vays the same, — to put down popular movements 
and uphold absolutism at any cost and to severely pun- 
ish all people of whatever ra.nk or character who tempt- 
ed the oppressed to shake off their fetters or who dared 
to give expression to emancipating ideas even in the 
halls of universities. He was a iilial and devoted son, 
an ornament as much to the domestic circle as to the 
rainbow arch of courtiers that surrounds a throne. He 
believed more i]i the divine right than the emperor him- 
self and gave his life trying to keep the cover on the 
Pandoras box of revolution. No democrat could believe 
more thoroughly than did he that a free press teaching 
free speech and the introduction of constitutions meant 
the ultimate downfall of every throne of Europe and the 
destruction of institutions hoary with time and draped 
with venerable traditions. He was never disloyal for 
his loyalty was to the Hapsburgs and not to Austria, to 
the principle of legitimacy and not to Germany, and his 
imperial master was right never to feel the tv/inge of 



42 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

jealousy and to delegate to him power as absolute and 
as irresponsible as that of Mordecai at the throne of 
Xerxes, or Maecenas at the court of Augustus. His 
cunning- was a match for the force of Napoleon, but the 
law of the force of inertia which he represented and em- 
bodied was overpowered and throttled by the power of 
the living- idea of freedom. Metternich alleg-ed that 
mankind had no rights, only duties. His allegation fell 
before the thesis that there are no duties that are not 
based on rights. The idea that he represented dies 
hard, but when it falls it falls like Lucifer never to rise 
again. 

The biography of Metternich in Lord's Beacon Lights of Histo- 
ry is liberally used here. 



CHAPTER IV. 



POLITICAL PROGRESS OF GERMANY. THE BURSCHENSHAFT 

AND THE DEMAGOGUE PERSECUTION. SOUTH 

GERMAN STATES. 



Germany had hoped three things from the uprising- of 
1813 against Napoleon. First, to get rid of a foreign 
yoke. Second, the restoration of national unity; and 
Third, the introduction of constitutional forms of gov- 
ernment. The first was accomplished. The second 
was made difficult by two things. First, the opposition 
of Austria under the leadership of Metternich. And 
second, the jealousy of the smaller powers. As to the 
introduction of the constitutional forms that could come 
either with one national constitution or by constitutions 
being introduced into each of the small states. The 
hope of a national Constitution for all Germany was 
shattered with the making of Austria president of the 
Bund Parliament and with the presence of Austrian 
troops in the Bund fortresses. As to separate consti- 
tutions: When Alexander and Frederick William III. 
formed in 1813 the alliance of Kalisch, they had to side- 
track all allies of Napoleon among the German princes 
by promising to all German people a federal constitu- 
tion. In the primeval spirit of the nation, a Prussian 
Empire lay then within the reach of the possibilities, 
but when Austria joined the alliance, the three allies 
agreed to giye up entirely the idea of the restoration of 
the Holy Roman Empire. Austria then proceeded to 
insure to the smaller states, especially Bavaria and 
Wuertemberg, their independence and the preservation 
of their new dignities. 

In 1816, according to the agreement of Vienna, the 
first session of the Bund (federal) Assembly met. It 
was without form and void and spent the greater part 
of the time in a quarrel with the "Elector" of Hesse who 
not only insisted on his now obsolete title of Elector but 



44 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

had also essayed to play the role of the King- of Sardinia 
and declare as simply void all that had happened in his 
land since 1806. He forced the purchasers of the con- 
fiscated domains to give them up again and introduced 
wigs one foot and two inches long of the style of Fred- 
erick the Great. This Bund Assembly had only one 
significance. Section 13 of its acts promised or as the 
wits said "prophesied" to the separate states individual 
state constitutions. The section originally read that 
"Within a year's time a constitution shall be granted to 
each Bund state." But the phrase "within a year's 
time" was stricken out on amendment and another amend- 
ment caused the phrase "shall be given" to bechangedto 
simple "will be giyen", making the whole thing an emp- 
ty promise without any time limit set for its fulfillment. 
There lay in this no hope that the states would receive 
a constitution, but there was a possibility independent 
of this that the new South German States might do so. 
Their independence or self-existence as nationalities 
had been granted by Napoleon and then certified by 
Austria but they were jealous of Austria's leadership 
and power, and as Prussia fell more and more under 
Austrian influence it furnished an additional reason why 
each Southern German State should crystalize its sepa- 
rate nationality in a constitution, and so Bavaria receiv- 
ed In 1818 a Constitution corresponding to the demands 
of the liberalism of that day. The arch duchy Baden 
had still another reason to desire a constitution: The 
reigning Arch-duke Karl Ludwig had only one male rel- 
ative close enough of kin to be his heir and that was his 
Uncle Ludwig, already an old m.an without children. 
If, however, the step-brother of the Uncle Ludwig, the 
Count of Hochberg, could be made the heir the duchy 
v/ould remain In practically the same family, but the 
Count of Hochberg was not legally entitled to succeed 
and hence only two lives stood between Bavaria who 
claimed the succession since the thirty years war and 
the arch-ducal throne. So the ruling duke In order to 



POLITICAL PROGRESS OF GERMANY. 45 

keep Baden in his family g-ave the land a constitution 
whose first paragraph declared that the Graf of Hoch- 
berg- was raised to the rank of Markgraf of Baden and 
put in the line of succession. Under the influence of 
Alexander of Russia, the foster father of constitutions, 
Bavaria gave up its claim on the succession in considera- 
tion of several pieces of land and a money payment of 
two million Guldens. And when in 1830 the Archduke 
Ludwig died, Leopold I. of the line of Hochberg really 
ascended the throne. 

The path to the constitution was not so easy in Wuer- 
temburg where Frederick I. was king. He had in 1806 
arbitrarily dissolved the old Estates and as he offered in 
1815 to give his people a new constitution after a liberal 
pattern he found them in the curious position of demand- 
ing the old arrangement back. They would not accept 
the liberal constitution as a gift arbitrarily given from 
the hand of a prince. His son William, who succeeded 
him in 1816, offered a still more liberal constitution, one 
far more timely and better than the one demanded bjr 
the people, but it also was for a longtime spurned. Uh- 
land's verse expressed their attitude: 

"Noch ist kein Fuerst so hoch gefuerstet 
So auserwaelt kein ird'sher man, 
Dass wenn die welt nach Freiheit duerstet 

Er sie mit Freiheit traenken kann, 
Dass er allein in seinen Haenden 

Den Reichtum alles Rechtes Haelt, 
Um an die Voelker auszespenden 
So viel, so wenig ihm gefaellt." 
Which may be loosely translated: 

There is no prince of rank so noble, so chosen out, no 
earthly man that when the world thirsts after freedom 
he may dare to drown that thirst with freedom, that he 
alone may hold the treasure of all right in his hand in 
order to spend on the people as much or as little as is 
pleasing to him. 

The idea was that what the king had given the king 



46 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

could when necessary take away. But an agreement 
was finally reached and the Constitution was g-iven in 
September 26, 1819. A number of the smaller states 
in South Germany followed suit, but as a matter of fact 
inside of a few years the attempt was made in the larg- 
er states either to do away with or to limit the freedom 
thus g-iven. Nevertheless South Germany retained 
some kind of constitutional g:overnment. In North 
Germany affairs were essentially otherwise. Joseph 
Goerres in the "Rheinishe Merkur" complained that 
while South Germany had St. Vitus Dance North Ger- 
many had been stricken with paralysis. In North Ger- 
many mediaeval feudalism in some form still survived. 
Although the North German Constitutions were such 
curiosities in their way we can hardly take time to 
describe them. In Saxony the estates were divided in- 
to seven departments that were never allowed to meet 
together. In Oldenburg- the Duke when asked for a 
Constitution said he would wait and see if it were a suc- 
r/~:'A in otlier places. In Hannover the Nobility wished 
10 restore the fourteen different constitutions which 
were in existence before the French period, but the 
Government called a new "General Land-tag" in which 
out of 85 representatives the nobility had 43 and the 
peasants had three. 

InPrussia the ideaofadeliberative Diet based on popu- 
lar representation for co-operation in taxation and legisla- 
tion wasafruitof theSteinHardenburg-reformsnurtured 
and ripened by the co-operative efforts of all classes in 
driving- out Napoleon and strengthened by the desire for 
a united Germany built up around the Prussian State. 

Frederick William III. had repeatedly, in written 
documents, promised to give his people a Constitution 
as a mark of his confidence. His idea was that out of 
the Estates of the provinces a federal representation 
should be chosen to meet in Berlin. This body was to 
have a certain power of deliberation but the right to 
form decisive conclusions was not promised and v/as 



POLITICAL PROGRESS OF GERMANY, 47 

never in the mind of the King-. A commission under 
the chairmanship of the State Chancellor von Harden- 
burg- w^as appointed to consider the matter. 

There was at Court a strong- opposition and reaction- 
ary party headed by the Police minister Vfitgenstein, 
the Crown Prince and the members of the royal family 
g-enerally. Their task v/as to gain time. Their chief 
argument was that there was already dissatisfaction in 
the new provinces especially Saxony, Posen, and the 
Rhine lands and that it would be a fatal error to give it 
legal opportunity to express itself. 

After 1813 Prussia had five and one-half million new 
subjects who had been previously citizens of more than 
one hundred different German territories and had been 
g-overned by the laws of nine different States. To as- 
similate these was a genuine difficulty. The reaction- 
ary party novv^ worked against the organization of the 
Estates in the newly won Saxon, Polish and Rheinish 
provinces and until this was done no general assembly 
could meet. The King comforted himself for break- 
ing his v.-ord with the persuasion that the v/elfare of 
his land demanded it; when he was persuaded, he said, 
that a Constitution would really serve the best interests 
of the land he wa.s ready for any sacrifice to give it but 
he thought it better to wait awhile a,nd see how the ex- 
periment succeeded in foreign countries. Meantime a 
few small disturbances and the tone of Goerres "Rhei- 
nishe Merkur" were sufficient to persuade the king 
that an anti-Prussian feeling reigned in the provinces 
and that it would be suicidal to give it a legitimate way 
to express itself and make propaganda. Also the al- 
leged existence of secret political societies and conspira- 
cies were used to terrify the king by the reactionary 
part3\ 

About this time a certain Herr Schmalz, a Court 
Councillor (Rat) wrote an article in which he sought to 
show that the rising of the people to expel Napoleon 
had nothing to do with the promise of constitutional 



48 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

privileges and freedom, but was caused by pure love 
and loyalty to the King- and that the people poured out 
to expel the invader just as members of the fire depart- 
ment v^ould rush out to a conflagration that was a com- 
mon danger. Bismarck afterward fostered a similar 
theory while von Sybel denounces as a caricature the 
idea that the German people bargained for their mili- 
tarj" service in expelling the invader to be paid with a 
constitution but admits the universal expectancy that 
it would be granted. There was a flood of answers to 
Schalmz's pamphlet but the king muzzled the press, for- 
bade the publication of these answers and decorated 
Schmalz with an order. Meantime Hardenburg had 
demonstrated that he loved his of&ce better than he did 
his liberal principles. His love of of&ce and his jealousy 
of men of rank and talent were such that he was unwil- 
ling to have an3^ but second-class minds near him 
lest he should wake up over night and find that his rival 
had become his successor. He was especially jealous 
of Wilhelm von Humbolt. As one result the commis- 
sion never met and his fear of being superceded by 
Humbolt eventually p^-oved well grounded. 

All the parties wereverj'^ looselj' formed and were torn 
withinternecinestrife. The realliberals were the j^oung- 
er generation. One of their leaders was the celebrated 
Turn Vater Jahn, the founder of German gymnasticSy 
outdoor exercises and turner halls. He was an ardent 
patriot, a rabid hater of the French, a half crazy crank. 
His bitter hatred of France had of course given him a 
place of prominence during- the wars to expel Napoleon, 
His idea was to plant a wilderness, an impenetrablefor- 
est bordered by an impassable desert, between Ger- 
many and France and fill both with wild beasts to pre- 
vent any intercourse whatever between the two coun- 
tries. An idea that Louvois in his Palatine war policj^ 
had once actually- attempted to execute. His ideas found 
great applause among the Burschenshaft, a general 
student organization somewhat similar to our Greek 



POLITICAL PROGRESS OF GERMANY. 49 

letter Fraternities. Fichte had sought at the time of 
the founding- of the University of Berlin with the pre- 
knowledge of Hardenburg to unite the students in such 
an organization as a preventiye and counter irritant to 
the raw and crude brutality of the Landshaftmen and 
corps students. But the org^anization was really found- 
ed at Jena on June 12, 1815. Among its early members 
was the student Bismarck. It showed in its first years 
no real political activity. Its object was to nurture a 
feeling of nationalism to combat the cosmopolitanism 
that before and since the days of Goethe had ruled 
among- the cultivated classes. In the year 1817 the 
Burschenshaft beg^an its political activity and gaye 
prominence to the national cause bj' the celebration on 
the Wartburg. On October of the year the Society of 
the Burschenshaft, now two years old and having chap- 
ters in a number of the universities, called a general 
convention to meet on the Wartburg, to celebrate the 
threefold anniversary of the Reformation, of the Vic- 
tory of Leipzig and of the first friendly meeting of the 
German Burschen. 

The Wartburg was redolent of patriotic memories. 
Wolfram from Eschenbach, the g-reat troubador of the 
Middle ages, had celebrated it in song- and it was the 
place cf Luther's imprisonment. The city magistracy 
of Eisenach, the clergy, representatives of all the Prot- 
estant Universities except four and a large number of 
students and citizens from Jena took part, altogether 
some 500 people. The affair had a decidedly religious 
tinge. Choral music, the apostolic blessing, and the 
celebration of the Lord's Supper had a prominent place 
on the programme. 

The speaking was filled with the cheap sentimental- 
ity and empty braggadocio so characteristic of German 
g-atherings. Current political questions were but little 
discussed. One orator expressed regret that so many 
beautiful hopes bad been in vain, another mournfully 
cried out that so far only one prince had kept his word 



so POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

and g-iven his people a constitution, but even these tim- 
id exuberances were checked and warned against as 
when Prof. Oken cautioned the students against self 
exaltation and warned them that it was unbecoming for 
Burschen to advise what ought to be done in the State. 
The whole thing passed off with no more desperate 
conclusion than the determination of thestudents to try 
and make their Society national and as wide spread as 
possible. But after the adjournment, while the Octo- 
ber fire lit up the hills round about, a small circle of 
students engaged in something which they regarded 
really as nothing more than a piece of nonsense of the 
t5'-pe that students have engaged in from time imme- 
morial. This crowd of feather brained students de- 
termined to celebrate a satirical afterpiece. A great 
bonfire was kindled and a student of the name of Mass- 
man who without the knowledge of the committee had 
brought up a basket full of books acted as master of 
ceremonies. The books represented an index expurga- 
torious. In one hand he held a ha\fork and he had pro- 
vided himself with great sheets of paper on which was 
I)ainted in large black letters the names of the books he 
wanted to condemn. These sheets were read aloud 
and then stuck on the end of the fork and fed to the 
flames, sometimes a copy of the book itself went with 
it. Among these books were copies of Immermann's 
writings against the Burschenshaft, Kotzebues' Ger- 
man flistorj', and Schmalze's hated denunciation. In 
all some 28 books were cast into the flames in imitation 
of Luther's burning of the papal bull (but this was an 
event for the burners far more serious, they had better 
have initiated Luther's caution while on the same spot). 
Together with the books there was pitched into the 
flames a Hessian wig, an Austrian corporal's stick and 
a Prussian corselet of the guard, but worst of all there 
were added to the flames copies of the acts of the Con- 
g-ress of Vienna and of the agreement for the Holy Alli- 
ance. 



POLITICAL PROGRESS OF GERMANY. SI 

The deed was more boyish folly than genuine patriot- 
ism and yet those that did it had the most and the best 
patriotism to be found in the land. But they were ut- 
terly without any ideaof adopting any political measures 
and had no prog-ram of reform whatever. It was merely 
an empty and sentimental protest after the German fash- 
ion. This celebration, however, must be measured not 
by the folly or innocence of those taking part, but by its 
effects on the goyernments of Europe. 

The elfect of the Y/artburg Celebration was to strike 
the reactionary party like a galvanic shock. Herr von 
Kamptz, whose book "Codex der Gendamarie"had been 
burnt, demanded from the Archduke of Weimar "pro- 
tection from the barbarized professors and seduced 
students and from a censorship exercised by 
silly enthusiasts and minors with fire and manure 
forks". Prince Hardenburg and the Austrian Ambas- 
sador in Berlin Graf Zichy traveled in person to Wei- 
mar and Jena to investigate. From St. Petersburg 
and Paris came sharply worded diplomatic notes de- 
manding that decisive measures be taken against the 
authors of the outrage. In short all the reactionary 
powers of Europe with the four great powers in advance 
hurled themselves against Weimar and the Students. 
The Archduke who at heart sympathized with the boys 
to som.e extent was forced to abolish the freedom of the 
press and substitute a strict censorship; to suppress 
the Burschen newspaper and sharpl}^ warn the other 
papers; and to begin an investigation into the conduct 
of the professors who had taken part. 

The reactionary spirit of Prussia was further in- 
flamed by the government's reception of the so-called 
Rhine address. As has been stated there was dissatis- 
faction in the newly acquired Rhine provinces. The 
king had after the manner of kings contributed to the 
relief of a famine there but ran alike rough-shod over 
the old provincial customs and institutions and the new 
liberalism., Hardenburg went to the provinces to try 



52 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

and allay the dissatisfaction and while there invited 
anyone who had anything helpful to suggest to do so. 
Goerres sent in a petition in pamphlet form dedicated 
to the crown prince and making- several suggestions. 
Hardenburg received it graciously but when the crown 
prince saw it he sent it back with a bitter and insulting 
letter, the Chancellor was reproved, and the only an- 
swer returned was that it was the province of his maj- 
esty to determine the proper time for granting a con- 
stitution. 

This was the state of affairs at the time of the con- 
vening of the Congress of Aachen. Its session lasted 
from Sept. 30th to Nov. 2!, 1818. This was the great 
event of that year. Its nominal task was to consider 
whether the garrisoning of France should continue 
longer but as a matter of fact it had been decided in ad- 
vance that it should not and the king of Prussia and the 
Russian czar had already taken a journey to Paris 
and had conferred with the French king making the 
union between the three still closer. In this way the 
protracted sessions were used to fortify the reaction in 
all Europe. 

Conscious now of his international power and rejoic- 
ing in the title of "the minister of Europe", Metternich 
sent to the king of Prussia a political note whose ground 
thought was that the granting of a representation to 
the people was synonymous with the dissolution of the 
State and he pressingly recommended in a second pa- 
per that measures be taken against the universities, 
the turner societies and the press. 

Just at this juncture there appeared a pamphlet 
which is of g-reat importance because it laid the founda- 
tion for a change in the mind of the Czar who had been 
hitherto in other lands at least the friend of Constitu- 
tionalism. It was written by Bojar Stourdza, a Wal- 
lachian and warned the Czar against the revolutionary 
spirit of the German people. In conjunction with it 
there came out of Poland news that mutterings of revo- 



POLITICAL PROGRESS OF GERMANY. S3 

lution were rife there and the elections in France 
brought in an utterly unexpected number of liberals 
and still further a conspiracy had been discovered 
whose purpose was to force the Czar on his journey 
through Belgium to recognize Napoleon II. as emperor 
of the French. Stourdza declared that the chief cause 
of discontent was the sorrowful condition of the uni- 
versities against whom charges on two counts were 
urged. Finance speculation in lowering the standard 
of scholarship and cutting prices to gain students and 
the Burschenshaft societies. In the meantime there had 
been organized a special branch of the Burschenshaft 
with political axioms and aspirations, the "Uncondi- 
tionals" who declared that kings were only the first of- 
ficials of the state and that they ought to be elected and 
that there ought to be an imperial parliament whose 
duty it should be to elect a ruler. They professed the 
doctrines of unity, freedom and equality and desired a 
closer and more secret union sometimes based on re- 
ligious sentiments. Some of the chapters celebrated 
the Lords Supper every time they came together. But 
there was neither stuff nor power to make a revolution 
here. The students were very indignant over Stourdzas 
writing and two students, both of noble family, imme- 
diately challenged him. He cowardly evaded the chal- 
lenge by sayirg that he had thought, written and acted in 
the service and under the commands of the Czar and 
the Czar was not responsible nor obliged to give satis- 
faction to anyone. The students scornfully accepted his 
apology saying that a thinking, writing and acting ma- 
chine was to be sure quite incapable of "giving satis- 
faction". 

Royal sentimentagainst the students was increased by 
the murder of Kotzebue, March 23, 1819. He was a Rus- 
sian spy whose history had been burned at the Wart- 
burg auto de le. By an accident some of the reports 
which he was accustomed to send to St. Petersburg 
fell into the hands of a certain professor Luden who 



54 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

published them in his paper the "Nemisis". The g-en- 
eral scorn and contempt for Kotzebues paid treachery 
caused a silly enthusiast Karl Sand from Wundsiedel to 
conceive the idea of assinating him. Sand was a stu- 
dent of theolog-3'^ not especially g-ifted, a member of the 
"Unconditionals", melancholy and scarcely compos men- 
tis. He loved to imag-ine himself an early German and 
wander around sitting- under old oaks wreathing his 
head with leaves and drinking out of horns and other- 
wisn imitating what he conceived to be the customs of 
the followers of Hermann. On the 23 of March he went 
to Mannheim, to which place Kotzebue had moved his 
residence, knocked at the door, and when the old man 
opened the door Sand plunged a dirk in his breast with 
the cry "Thou betrayer of the fatherland." Sand then 
plunged the dirk in his own breast, ran to the street, 
fell on one knee, called out "Hoch das Vaterland", and 
again stabbed himself, but neither of the two strokes he 
had given himself was deadly. He recovered, was tried, 
condemned and fifteen months later beheaded. This 
foolish and unnecessary murder made a tremendous im- 
pression on the sentimental German people. The cele- 
brated Berlin theologian DeWette wrote a letter of com- 
fort to the mother of Sand. Goerres said all Germany 
disapproves the act and applauds the motive. The 
handkerchiefs of Sand's comrades were dipped in his 
blood when he was beheaded and laid away as sacred 
relics. A similar but unconnected event increased the 
royal apprehension. An apothecary's apprentice in 
Nassau made an assault with attempt to kill on the 
states councillor von Ibell. It failed and the assailant 
Loening took his own life in prison. There was no real 
connection between the two foolish deeds, but Metter- 
nich and his cohorts were or pretended to be terrified 
and to fear a general conspiracy nursed by secret socie- 
ties. All Prussian students were recalled from Jena. 
DeWette lost his position on account of the letter he had 
written; many students and their sympathizers were put 



POLITICAL PROGRESS OF GERMANY. 55 

in prison; many others, Jahn among"tliem, had their papers 
seized; Goerres was forcedtoahastj^ flight toStrassburg 
in order to escape arrest; and Mecklenburg-, Hesse, and 
other states followed Prussia's lead with similar meas- 
ures. Metternich was really delighted with this state 
of affairs. He heard of Kotzebue's murder during a 
visit in Rome and said at once he did not doubt it had 
occurred by command of the Jena fern gericht, and has- 
tened to take measures of retaliation. 

Metternich 's political task was three fold: 

First, to get the Czar fully committed to the Reaction. 
For this purpose he made due use of Sturdza's writings 
and Kotzebue's murder and alleged secret societies. 

Second, to sidetrack the reform plans of Hardenburg 
and Plumbolt and to have them dismissed from the cab- 
inet of Prussia and to fortify the king in his aversion to 
a constitution. 

Third, to render nugator5' and void as far as possible 
the South German constitutions. 

His means were his diplomatic influences and the 
apparition of the raw head and blood^'^ bones of impend- 
ing revolution which he constantly waved before the 
Czar and Frederick William HI. His instruments were 
to be also threefold: Strong police supervision and vio- 
lation of the mails, muzzling the press and controlling 
the universities by his court of high commission and 
deposing and dismissing professors with liberal views. 
To assist him in the task he arranged a conference at 
Teplitz with the Prussian king. 

Without waiting to leave Rome Metternich had already 
sent out invitations for a general conference of the Ger- 
man states to convene at Carlsbad in August. But 
meantime he himself visited Frederick William HI. at 
Teplitz and fully gained him as a satellite for all his plans. 
They two agreed on the ground plans of a press law to 
lessen the number of the many new^spapers and to con- 
trol their utterances, and on a plan for deposing obnox- 
ious professors. Similar measures were to be proposed 



56 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

to the Conference at Carlsbad which met in August 1819, 
There was no popular or even class representation, but 
the assembly was composed of ministers of the various 
states. This was Metternich's idea of a general parlia- 
ment; a minister conference of which he was to be pres- 
ident and in which the ministers of the participating- 
states were to take their orders from him. There was 
a conflict with Wuertemburg oyer the celebrated article 
13, and a final agreement that no constitution granted 
was to contradict the monarchical principle and the act 
of confederation. Then followed a general agreement 
to persecute and prosecute the so-called demagogues; to 
make the Burchenshaft and the Turner societies illegal; 
and to place in all universities officers of the government 
called curators whose function it should be to keep a 
close watch on all professors and students. Censorship 
for all periodicals, papers, and books under 20 quires 
was introduced, while for the investigation of the secret 
societies, a general commission for all Germany with its 
seat at Mainz was estblished. 

All of this had no binding power as the assembly at 
Carlsbad was not provided for by law and as only a few 
states were represented even by their ministers and 
these few, with the exception of Wuertemburg, were 
heart and soul the property of Metternich. The decis- 
ions of the conference could only be made legal by ac- 
tion of the Bundestag federal Diet and could be strictly 
enforced only by the several states themselves. 

The Bundestag met in September and immediately 
without an3' debate and without the representatives 
having received instructions from their respective gov- 
ernments the Carlsbad decisions were ratified. As one 
delegate expressed it they were not weighed and dis- 
cussed but rather dictated and the representatives 
forced to agree and those who did not wish to dance to 
the Metternichian pipes were ignored or treated as pre- 
sumptuous servants without legal rights. Metternich 
had a contempt for those whom he thus led around by 



POLITICAL PROGRESS OF GERMANY. 57 

the nose— the same contempt that Napoleon had experi- 
enced when he had seen the Germans in Parliament. 
Metternich boasted after Teplitz that he had seen 
through the soul of the Prussian king- and that in Prus- 
sia there were two negative forces in conflict — the weak- 
ness of the king and the weakness of the chancellor 
(Hardenburg), 

Two other points in the conclusions of this Parlia- 
ment need to be noted. First, that the constitutions re- 
ferred to in article 13 were to be after the old German 
ante-French revolution period and not constitutions of 
foreign, i. e. French, pattern. That is, the constitu- 
tions were to be based on the old Estates of the nobil- 
it3\ the clergy and the citizens, and not on popular rep- 
resentation. Second, those professors who might be 
deposed for their liberal views were to be prohibited a 
position in an}^ institution of learning in any state of the 
Germa,n Federation. The same was true of the ex- 
pelled student. 

Wilhelm von Hum bolt is said to haye designated the 
Carlsbad decisions as "shamefully antinational and in- 
sulting to a thinking people" but as he had at the same 
time a dispute with Hardenburg as to taxation meas- 
ures he was forced to leaye the Cabinet and his opinions 
had no weight. 

Capodislria, the Greek confidential adviser of the 
Czar, urged the German Estates to opposition against 
the "Conclusions". He said to the representatives 
from Baden "fear is always a bad adviser." His advice 
was genuine but doubtless permitted for political rea- 
sons by the Czar, and proved impotent with the most of 
the German States, although two by their actions nega- 
tived a part at least of the decisions reached. 

Fortunately Wuertemburg received exactly at this 
juncture its constitution and madean appealfor support 
to Russia which that country's jealousy of Metternich 
caused her to promptly extend. There was also a re- 
vival of the Constitutional party in Bavaria at this time 



58 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

and largfely for the same reason. 

The Carlsbad conference had continued its sittings 
in Vienna and what is known as the Vienna Final Act, 
signed in May, 1820, onlj' reemphasizes the indepen- 
dence of the separate states, an independence to be 
sure exercised under Metternichs influence, but that 
nevertheless shows the separatism and state rights 
views of the German peoples. In some states, in North 
Germany especially, the decisions of Carlsbad were 
carried out with hateful attention to detail. Jahn was 
arrested and held in prison a long time and countless 
students were imprisoned for wearing red-black-gold 
badges or for having sung patriotic Burschenshaft 
songs. One schoolboy had painted a devil swallowing a 
king, another had exclaimed, "O, Sand, you did not 
realize what hay oxen we Germans are." Such follies 
meant imprisonment, sometimes for ten years. The 
whole persecution was useless and foolish for there 
was really no conspiracy to suppress and no revolution 
to put down. Hardenburg shortly before his death 
practically received his dismissal but Wilhelm von Hum- 
bolt his successor and rival remained only a short time 
in the cabinet. The promise of a constitution was 
withdrawn and the Provincial estates when they were 
finalh^ partially organized were practicall}^ on the old 
basis. Out of 504 members the nobilitj^ possessed 278, 
the citizens 182 and the peasants 124. Meantime the 
king was growing- old and the crown prince was heart 
and soul given over to the party of the reaction. He 
was moreover an ardent disciple of Haller's theory of 
political science and government. 

This theory was the reaction against the treatj^ or 
civil contract theory of government that made the peo- 
ple in last anahj-sis sovereign which had been evolved 
by Locke out of Hobbe's absolutistic theory. Haller 
regarded the country as the property of the prince 
which he had obtained from God, the nobilitj^ became 
such as reward for services to the crown but their rights 



POLITICAL PROGRESS OF GERMANY. 59 

ane lands were not to be recalled and were hereditary. 
The state was the order which had been ordained by the 
prince. The citizens and peasants like the nobility had 
no part either in making- of laws or voting taxes which 
had not been conceded them by the prince and it lay 
wholly and entirelj^ in his option to extend their part in 
the government. No right by nature was at all recog- 
nized. The best patterns of government were to be 
found in the Middle ages. The different classes of so- 
ciety were fixed and stratified by the will of the ruler, 
and the lines of caste were immutable. In short, the 
whole doctrine of the absolute monarch^', of the divine 
rights of kings and of the kingship by the grace of God 
w^as ardently subscribed to by the man who was next 
to sit on the Prussian throne. 



N. B. — For the convenience of students this work is first issued 
in pamphlet form. The first volume containing- the history of the 
period from 1815 to 1850 will appear in five installments twenty to 
thirtj' days apart. 

The second installment, due Nov. 20, will contain an account 
■of the Italian, Spanish, Portug-uese and Greek revolutions, the 
ultimate triumphs and the dissolution of the Holy Alliance. The 
promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine and its significance for Eu- 
ropean history and events in Prance up to the outbreak of the Ju- 
ly Revolution. 

The third installment will contain the French July Revolution, 
the revolutions in Belgium., Poland and Germany, etc. 

The next two numbers will carry the history up to the year 1850. 

Price of the First Volume (1815 to 1850) $2.50, delivered either in 
installments or complete in book form. Write to author pr to 
Baylor Book Store. 



CHAPTER V. 



RENEWED REVOLUTIONS IN ITALY AND SPAIN. REACTION- 
ARY CONGRESSES OF TRAPPAU, LAYBACH AND 
VERONA. THE MONROE DOCTRINE 
HUMILIATION OF SPAIN. 



Never, after Napoleon, could the people of Spain for- 
get the working-s of a constitutional g-overnment. The 
Spaniards had promulgated in 1812 a constitution that, 
for liberality, would compare well with anything com- 
posed by the liberals of Europe for the last half cen- 
tury, a constitution that was to be the model for Por- 
tugal, Italy and other nations although it is hard to 
realize now that Spain has ever proved a congenial home 
for free ideas. These ideas came partly from the 
French revolution but more largely from the new 
world from the newly formed United States. There 
had been a series of small but bloody revolutions ever 
since the restoration of the Bourbons in 1814, but the 
year 1820 witnessed the beginning of a revolution that 
was to be at least temporarily successful. What made 
success possible vv^as the constant dissatisfaction in the 
army caused by governmental neglect and the failure 
to pay and feed the troops, but most of all by the fear of 
the troops that they would be shipped to America 
where in the last few yearsover42000 men had been sent 
Avithout being able to advance the cause of Spain in the 
colonies and where in the foreign climates under neg- 
lect and hunger and the sword of their enemies most of 
tnem had fallen. 

Early in 1820 Spain desired to send a specially 
large levy of troops to try and strike a decisive 
blow in the colonies. It was among the soldiers 
who were to be sent out herded together like swine at 
and near Cadiz that the insurrection broke out, prem.a- 
turely, owing to the treachery of Count Abisbal. On 
the iirst day of January at Cabezas near Cadiz, Raphael 



62 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

Rieg"o headed an insurrection among- the soldiers, had 
them swear to the constitution of 1812 and had several 
successes but the garrison in Cadiz remained loyal and 
Riego was obliged to hurriedly march from place to 
place in Andalusia with the prospects of success ever 
g-rowing- less. By the first of March all seemed lost 
when the spark of revolution that was about to be 
smothered in the south broke out afresh in the northern 
provinces of Af agon and Catalonia. Mina, the noted ban- 
dit, came back from France to lead the insurgents, and 
when Count Abisbal, who had previously betrayed the 
revolutionists, was sent against them, he in turn desert- 
ed with his army to the insurgent cause and the revo- 
lution was a success. The king Ferdinand saw him- 
self surrounded by revolution north and south, with an 
insurrection (March 6), breaking out in Madrid itself 
and in a dilemma where he must choose either abdica- 
cation or the constitution, and so on March 9 he solemn- 
ly swore to support the constitution. The land rejoic- 
ed. A liberal Cortez was elected and liberal ministers, 
most of them former victims of the king, entered the 
cabinet, and the land transformed itself decently, and in 
order. Seldom in history has so complete a revolution 
fulfilled itself at so little cost. The Jesuitsand kindred 
orders were expelled, the property of the cloisters con- 
fiscated and progress seemed assured. But three 
things had not been taken into account: The clergy, 
the rabble and the principle of interference preached 
by Metternich and practiced by the "Reaction" in all 
Europe, 

The effect of this revolution was powerful enough to 
cause it to be emulated in Portugal the next month. The 
king, John VI., was still in Brazil. Lord Beresford had also 
gone over to that country and on the 15th of September 
Colonel Sepulvada with thegarrison of Opporto rose inin- 
surrection. The movement sped with the speed of the 
Vv'ind over the whole land and almost at once a provision- 
al government was set up in Lisbon. Beresford was de- 



REVOLUTIONS IN ITALY AND SPAIN, ETC. 63 

Glared exiled and the return of the absent monarch as 
constitutional king- was demanded. Beresford came 
speedily back but was unable even to affect a 
landing-. John VL, under pressure from his son Dom 
Pedro, also sailed from Brazil accompanied by his wife 
Carlotta and his second son Dom Miguel. Immediately 
on the departure of his father Dom Pedro proclaimed 
himself constitutional emperor of Brazil which was de- 
clared to be independent of the mother country. 

On his arrival in Portugal and before he was allowed 
to land King John accepted the constitution against the 
bitter opposition of his wife and son and so on the 27th 
of June, 1821 Portugal entered the list of constitutional 
states and rejoiced for a few years in its new and de- 
lightful freedom. 

The alarm bells of revolution echoed also in Italy 
whose sadly dismembered condition however prevented 
a more general, more co-operative and more successful 
response. 

Two things were necessary before Italy could be- 
come a nation. An intense desire for libertj^, personal 
liberty, and a vv'illingness to unite the warring states 
and factions and make blood the test of fellowship, in 
other words the ethnic-national feeling-. The first 
quarter of the 19th Century saw in both Germany and 
Italy a love of individual freedom but a lack of national 
feeling. Bolhthegloriesof classic Rome and the revivals 
of the Renaissance combined to make common people, 
nobility and citizens feel their chains, but the provinces 
of Ital^^ were under different powers who were ready 
enough to oppress each other. Naples was under the 
intellectual dominion and political control of Spain. 
Sicily was under that of Naples, and yet with memories 
of independence and even of having been under Freder- 
ick II. the centre of a world empire. The central por- 
tion was under Rome and the northern provinces under 
Austria. 

The allegiance to the spiritual rule of the Pope was 



64 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

universal and his temporal dominions cut Italy in two. 
The idea of depriving- him of his temporal power and 
yet leaving- him his spiritual power was an idea that it 
would take time to develop but it developed first and 
quickest where the people suffered under priestlj'^-offi- 
cial and civil maladministration. The solution of the 
problem was to leave the Pope only his spiritual power, 
but that increased. Without knowing the way to free- 
dom all Italy groaned to be free, free to act and 
speak without the fear of spies, informers, inquisitions 
and exile. Tuscany alone was practically indifferent. 

No one in Naples thought of acting in conjunction 
with the northern states. Sicily saw in Naples her ty- 
rant. In the church states the patriots rose against 
the priests, while in Lombardy the priests rose with 
the nobility and commoners to help drive out the Aus- 
trians. Such was the condition when the news first 
came to Naples of the success of the Spanish revolution. 
The army, thoroughly permeated with the spirit and 
filled with the members of the Carbonari, rose in re- 
volt. An auspicious beginning for a European revolution 
that does not begin with or include the army has no 
hope for success. (This truth explains the present 
day efforts of the Social democrats to make the army 
dissatisfied in Germany and elsewhere.) 

A certain Lieutenant Morelli started from Nola 
toward Naples on July 2 with a few soldiers, but his 
march quickly became a triumphal progress and citi- 
zens and soldiers joined him at every step. William 
Pepe, the most popular of the generals, started out of 
the capitalwithseveralregimentstomeethimbuthe him- 
self took the side of the revolution and the Spanish Con- 
stitution of 1812. All thoughts of resistance had to be 
immediately abandoned and the revolution was practically 
bloodless. The king claimed to be sick and turned the 
government over to his son as prince regent in order 
that he might swear to the constitution, but the perjury 
that the king had contemplated from the beginning was 



REVOLUTIONS IN ITALY AND SPAIN, ETC. 65 

not to be avoided. Pepe forced not only the crown 
prince as regent to swear to the constitution but the 
king- also, and the king in swearing voluntarily added 
the prayer that if he swore a lie he prayed that God 
might smite him dead with the thunders of his revenge. 
The entire population drank deep of the cup of joy but 
they speedily found among its dregs a dash of gall. 
The news reached Sicily and the revolt at once broke 
out there, but it was directed against Naples as well as 
against the principle of absolutism. The inhabitants 
of Palermo, after a short resistance which cost some 
four thousand lives, set up an independent government 
with a separate constitution and connected with Naples 
only by personal union. That is, the countries should 
be separated but they should have the same constitu- 
tional king who should govern in each according to its 
own constitution. Prince Villafranca stood at the 
head of the provisional government. The suddenness 
of the revolution had given it as in Spain a temporary 
success. 

And now comes the act of Naples folly. A brother 
of Pepe was sent to Sicily at the head of troops. He 
promised the insurgents that if they would submit, the 
question as to the union of Sicily with Naples should be 
left to Sicily's delegates. Thus, partly by treachery 
and partly by force of arms he put down the rebellion, 
but was obliged to leave the greater part of his troops 
there as a garrison, for the people were conquered but 
not convinced. Their doubt was justified, as the Na- 
ples government refused to be bound by his agreement 
as to the mere personal union. Meantime Metternich in- 
voked the intervention of the powers by calling the 
"Minister Congress" at Troppau. It was an aggrega- 
tion of royalties as well as diplomats. 

The three kings of the holy alliance were there as 
was Nicholas the brother of the czar and the crown 
prince of Prussia accompanied by Hardenburg and 
Bernstoff while England and France were represented 



66 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

by Stewart and Caraman. At first Alexander was still 
coy and reluctant to interfere in Italy and Spain on 
account of his liberal principles, but troubles in Poland 
and an insurrection of the g-uard reg-iment Seminoff at 
St. Petersburg- completed what the propaganda of 
Stourdza had begun. Metternich heard of the insurrec- 
tion, before the news of it reached the Czar and hastened 
to l3ij it in exaggerated form before him as proof that 
liberal ideas were undermining every throne in Europe 
and that the czar could not hope to encourage them 
elsev/here and g-o unscathed himself. Alexander was 
thus completely and for all time won to the cause of 
the reaction. England and France entered Yy/eak and 
ineffectual protests against the proposed principle of 
interference, but Metternich, who was determined to 
stamp out liberalism in every country in Europe, would 
not even treat with the new constitutional gov- 
ernment of Naples, but in the name of the powers 
sent to invite king Ferdinand to meet with 
them, at a new session of the congress at Laibach, 
called to meet in January, 1821. The Neapolitans v/ere 
naturally incensed at being ignored in the matter but 
were finally so foolish as toallowtheirking to attend after 
ag-ain receiving from him an oath of allegiance to the 
constitution and even magnanimously refused to send 
with him four m^embers of Parliament v/hom he had of- 
fered to take saying- that they knew^theheart of thesonof 
Charles llll.tobethetempleof truth. Immediately on his 
arrival the owner of the temple of truth promptly declar- 
ed his oath void because forced from him under duress--, 
and the powers, England and Franceweakly protesting, 
decided to send at once an Austrian army to Italy to re- 
store order to be followed by a Russian army if neces- 
sary. As the Austrians advanced, the costly error cf 
Naples' intolerance becam.e apparent. 

The flower of the Neapolitan troops was in Sicily, the 
balance, in tvvO armies under the divided command of 
Pepe and his most deadly rival, first quarrelled among 



REVOLUTIONS IN ITALY AND SPAIN, ETC. 67 

themselves, then met the enemy on the frontier and, af- 
ter a feeble skirmish, were dispersed and the Austrian 
army escorting- the king- entered Naples to the great 
jubilation of the populace. This defeat -was a death 
blow to the Carbonari, some of whose members were 
driyen through the streets riding face backwards on 
donkeys and were publicly whipped in every plaza. 
The universities were closed, the Jesuits were called 
back, hundreds were executed, the prisons were filled. 
All men of prominence who had taken part in the re- 
volt were carried away to rot in Austrian prisons. And 
so it continued under Ferdinand I. and his son Francis 
I. from 1825 to 1830. 

And yet, if only any real resistance had been made, it 
had a chance to succeed. Even as it was inside of three 
days after the skirmish on the frontier all Lombardy 
was in revolt. The olan had been for Lombardy and 
Naples toact in unison. The idea was a good one and the 
timesauspicious for whatwaseasierthanforthe Neapoli- 
tans to retreat until the Lombards could fall on the Aus- 
trians in the rearafterthe manner of the Lombardy of the 
middle ages that liad in this fashion discomfited Barba- 
rossa himself. Moreover the king of Sardinia was old 
and tired of office and it was found easj^ to induce him 
to resign. His successor would naturally have been 
his brother Carl Felix, but he was absent and the next 
successor, Carl Albert, was the head of the side line of 
Savoy-Carignan which had not only been out of power 
for centuries but Carl Albert himself had been reared a 
liberal and was known in fact as the Carbonari king. 
He wasnow infactreally proclaimed regentbutthefailure 
of the revolution in Naples insured that of Milan's rev- 
olution. The regent Carl Albert, eventually resignedhis 
office to Carl Felixandthe leaders, all but two who were 
executed, escaped toSpainand Greece which now became 
storm centres of the struggle for independence. By 
invoking the powers, Metternichhad won again in Italy, 
but the state of affairs in France and Spain and the 



/ 



68 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

breaking- out of the Greek war of independence caused 
a new Congress of Monarchs to be called to meet in Ve- 
rona in Oct., 3822, to protect the threatened legitimacy 
of the Bourbon and the Turk. The demon of liberalism 
was to be exercised in Spain and her rebellious colonies 
were to be restored. By the aid of unhappy France, 
the first object of the reaction in regard to Spain was 
to be accomplished. But when it came to a considera- 
tion of the second as to the colonies, it was seen that a 
new star had cleared the horizon across the seas that 
was destined in conjunction wnth England to bind the 
unsavory influences of the continental constellation. 
Columbia was to rear for a moment her head among the 
powers, while from her lips thundered the proud pro- 
hibitions of the Monroe doctrine announcing to the ag- 
gressive torrent of the reaction "thus far shalt thou 
come and no farther and here shalt thy proud waves 
be stayed." The pillars of Hercules were to confine its 
swelling tide and on their frowning portals the old ne 
plus ultra was reinscribed. 

In France the extension or contraction of the right of 
suffrage worked a standing or falling ministry. The 
Charter under which the Bourbon resumed his throne 
gave the ballot to only a few hundred thousand. Scarce 
one man in a hundred had it. By successful alterations 
of the right of suffrag-e any party could be put or 
kept in power. It was necessary only so to frame 
the law that only those who favored desired 
legislation should be allowed the suffrage. The 
party divisions on caste or class lines made this 
easier to manipulate and yet it was a matter so delicate 
that there was five times a change of ministry before 
the shrinkage in the suffrage was sufficient to insure the 
stability of a sufiiciently reactionary ministry. In the 
course of the contest the murder of the duke of Berry, 
only son of Charlesof Artois,byafanaticLouval(Feb.l3, 
1820) caused the fall of Decadzes, the greatest of the lib- 
eral ministers. Richelieu had been restored to power, but 



REVOLUTIONS IN ITALY AND SPAIN, ETC. 69 

had lost it ag-ain because he was not reactionary enough 
for the part}' of Artois and the court. Finally Villele, 
a thorough reactionary, had attained the Premier- 
ship, the press was muzzled, and liberals weredrivenoutof 
all civil offices. Education was made a monopoly in the 
hands of the clerg-y and France was in condition to do 
the dirty police work of the reaction. 

In England, on the contrar5s there had been a 
change in the other direction. Castlereagh was 
at the end of his career and Canning, the protege 
of Pitt, although originally a sti'ong Torj^ had 
been converted to liberal views. Castlereagh and 
and Wellington who represented the waning power of 
the old Tories were the representatives of England at 
the Congress of Verona. It was soon evident that the 
two great questions were in regard toSpain and her col- 
onies: How was the absolute monarchy to be restored in 
Spain, and hovv^ were her colonies to be subdued and re- 
stored to the mother country? The reign of Napoleon 
had really assured to the colonies their independence. 
The}-- had not acknowledged his authority and had learn- 
t'd that they couUl govern Vv-lthout any assistance or ad- 
vice from the mother country. So when the Bourbon 
was restored in Spain the colonies refused to acknowl- 
edge his authority' over them, and in a many 3'ears war 
Spain had not been able 10 conquer them, and their inde- 
pendence had been acknowledged by the United States 
of America. 

In Spain the king, after several futile attempts to break 
free from the liberal leading- strings, was obliged to ex- 
change as minister Rosie the pastry cook, a moderate lib- 
eral, for San Miguel the leader of the extreme and radi- 
cal liberals or Ealtados and Riego was made president 
of the Cortez. 

Such was the condition of affairs when the Congress 
met, Metternich, srtange tosay, showed some reluctance 
to mix up in Spain's affairs to the extent of armed inter- 
ference, but the czar Alexander, now the most radical of 



70 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

reactionaries, was determined that the revolntionand lib- 
eral g-overnment in Spain should be put down, as he pre- 
ferred with French troops, but to be put down as he said 
"throug-h France, with France, without France, ag-ainst 
France". (La g-uerre centre I'espag-ne par la France 
ayac la France sans la France, centre la France.) Louis 
XVIII. v/as personally reluctant to interfere, although 
he had received a letter written hj the king of Spain 
with his own hand urging him to do so. Even Villele 
hesitated to undei'take a task at which Napoleon had 
failed. WhileintheFrench Chamber, araernber, Manuel, 
said the situation was to be compared only to that when 
the Prussian troops ha^d marched into France and could 
have only the same result, the execution of the king. 
He was however expelled from the House and carried 
away by the police as having advocated regicide. 

The real opposition to the object of the Congress 
came from across the seas. 

The Verona Congress is of especial importance for 
American History in both the northern and southern 
Hemipheres. The United States appears in history 
for the first time adopting- the attitude and speaking in 
the tone of a great power. The foreign policy of the 
United States ma^^ be said to date from the enunciation 
of the Monroe doctrine. The most striking- character- 
istic of Mr. Monroe was the desire to give Am^erica 
prestige abroad, a desire keenly sharpened by his resi- 
dence in Europe. The revolt of Spain's colonies and 
his presidential election were alm.ost contemporaneous. 
Immediately after his accession, he commissioned Bay- 
ard Grobam and Forbes to visit the southern republics 
and to express to them the cordial good feeling-s of 
their brethren of the north and to learn their military 
forces, strength, resources, moral and political condi- 
tion and the probability of their ultimate success. 

These reported the colonies beyond a doubt already 
emancipated from Spain. Their independence was 
thereupon recognized b}- the United States which an- 



REVOLUTIONS m ITALY AND SPAIN, ETC. 71 

nouiiced it to be its settled policy to recog-nize g-overn- 
ments de facto as g-overnments de juie. This attitude 
of the United States was early and definitely known 
abroad. In July, 1818, the American ambassador Rush 
had been informed by Lord Castlereagh in the presence 
of the French ambassador that England and France 
had been invited to co-operate with the Holy Alliance to 
subdue the rebellious colonies of Spain. He promptly 
replied that the United States would countenance no in- 
tervention for peace that did not have as a basis the in- 
dependence of the colonies. This decisiye reply caus- 
ed England to hesitate. That country was face to face 
with a dilemma. One horn of it was, that it was great- 
ly to her trade interests to recog-nize the independence 
of the colonies and to secure their commerce that at 
present could only be carried on with Spain and in 
Spanish vessels. The other horn was that Eng-land 
had colonies of her own in the Western world whose in- 
dependence the United States was likewise ready to 
recognize when they set up any kind of an independent 
government, so England feared that if she gave too 
readj- a recognition to rebellious provinces, she would 
encourage her own to revolt. 

Heace, at the Verona Congress, England's represen- 
tatives were divided on the colonial question, one of 
them fa-voring- antagonizing- the Alliance and getting- the 
trade, while the other was willing- to see the colonies re- 
conquered. There can be no doubt that the known at- 
titude of the United States caused the colonia.1 question 
to be deferred for another conference to be held within a 
year's time in Paris. Before that conference could meet 
President Monroe had on Dec. 2, 1823, in his annual 
messag-e to Congress, calmly and unequivocally an- 
nounced the attitude of the United States in case the 
polic}^ pursued at the Congresses of Troppau, Laibach, 
Verona should be extended to the new world. 

In that part of the message that relates to foreig-n in- 
tercourse he says; 



72 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

"The citizens of the United States cherish sentiments 
the most friendly in fayoroftheliberty and happiness of 
their fellowmen on the other side of the Atlantic. In 
the wars of European powers in matters relating- to 
themselyes, we have never taken any part nor does it 
comport with our policy so to do. It is only when our 
rig-hts are invaded or seriously menaced, that we re- 
sent injuries or make preparation for defense. 

With the movements in this hemisphere, we are of ne- 
cessity immediately connected, and by causes which 
may be obvious to all enlig-htened and impartial observ- 
ers. The political system of the allied powers is es- 
eentially different in this respect from that of America. 

This difference proceeds from that which exists in 
their respective governments. And to the defense of 
our own, which has been achieved by the loss of so 
much blood and treasure, and matured by the wisdom 
of their m.ost enlig-htened citizens, under which we have 
enjoyed unexampled felicity, this whole nation is devo- 
ted. We owe it therefore to candor, and to the amicable 
relations existing between the United States and those 
powers, to declare, that we should consider anj^ attempt 
on their part to extend their system to an^^ portion of 
this hemisphere, as dangerous to our peace and safety. 
With existing colonies or dependencies of an3r Euro- 
pean power, we have not, and shall not interfere. But 
with the governments who have declared their indepen- 
dence, and maintained it, and Vv'hose independence we 
have on great consideration, and on just principles, ac- 
knowledged, we cannot view anj^ interposition for the 
purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other 
manner their destinies, by an3^ European power, in any 
other light than as a manifestation of an unfriendly dis- 
position towards theUnited States. In the war between 
these new governments and Spain, we declared our neu- 
trality, at the time of their recognition, and to this we 
have adhered and shall continue to adhere, provided no 
change shall occur, which in the judgment of the com- 



DEVOLUTIONS m ITALY AND SPAIN, ETC, 73 

petent authorities of this government, shall make a 
corresponding change on the part of the United States 
indispensable to their se<:urit5^ 

The late events in Spain and Portugal show that Eu- 
rope is still unsettled. Of this important fact, no 
stronger proof can be adduced, than that the allied 
powers should have thought it proper, on any principles 
satisfactory to themselves, to have interposed, by force 
in the internal concerns of Spain. To what extent such 
interposition may be carried on the same principle, is a 
question in which allindependent powers, whose govern- 
ments differ from theirs, areinterested, even those most 
remote, and surely none more so than the United States 
Our policy in regard to Europe, which was adopted in 
an early stage of the wars which have so long agitated 
that quarter of the globe, nev^ertheless remains the 
sam.e; which is, not to interfei-e in the internal concerns 
of any of its powers; to consider the government de 
facto; as the legitimate government to us; to cultivate 
friendly relations, by a frank form of manly policy, 
meeting in all instances, the just claims of every power, 
and submitting to jniuries from none. But in regard 
to this continent circujT: stances are emineiitiy and con- 
spicuously different. It is impossible that the allied 
powers should extend their political system to any por- 
tion of this continent, without endangering our peace 
and happiness, nor can any one believe that our southern 
brethren if left to themselves, could adopt it of their 
own accord. It is equally impossible therefore, that 
we should behold such interposition, in any form with 
indifference. If we look to the comparative strength 
and resources of Spain, and those new governments 
and their distance from each other, it must be obvious 
that she can never subdue them. It is still the true 
policy of the United States to leave the parties to them- 
selves, in the hope that other powers will pursue the 
same course." 

In England, a liberal party was being built up that 



74 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

advocated the cause of the revolutions in the smaller 
states. It must be confessed that it was composed too 
larg-ely of doctrinaires and that much of its agitation 
v^^as literarj^ rather than political. Byron and Moore 
by their writings attracted wide attention. Byron was 
subsequently to prove his faith by his works and die in 
the cause of Greek independence, and Moore's "Fables 
for the Holy Alliance" present some specimens of the 
richest satire. Politically, Canning was the leader of 
this party and was soon, in a burst of impassioned ora- 
tory, to remind the reactionary nations that England 
had the power to open the caves of the winds and un- 
leashing- the cyclones let the storms of revolution lash 
the world. ' The liberal propaganda had gone so far 
that at Verona one of England's representatives as we 
have seen was opposed to interference b}^ the Holy Al- 
liance in America and both were opposed to such inter- 
ference in Spain. 

The liberal party called on England to prevent such 
interference, but the government of George IV. was not 
far advanced for that yet, althoug-h, as we shallsee, thej"- 
did interfere in Portugal. 

E^rance's representatives at Verona were Montmor- 
ency^ and Chateaubriand both more royalistic than the 
king. Montmorency, for complying too readily with 
Alexander's plans, was dismissed, but Chateaubriand 
who had ag^reed with him in all respects, was made his 
successor and returned to France, enthusiastic for the 
war, and succeeded in bringing over the king and Vil- 
lele to his waj^ of thinking so that the announcement 
was speedilj^ made that 100,000 Frenchmen stood ready 
to support on his throne the heir and successor to Hen- 
ry V. The command of the troops was entrusted to 
Angouleme who with comparative ease assisted by the 
clerical party in Spain and the mob, at the head of 
five army corps drove the liberals from Madrid to Se- 
ville and from Seville to Cadiz. The liberals carried 
the king with them as prisoner and he was several 



REVOLUTIONS IN ITALY AND SPAIN, ETC. 75 

times near to meeting- the fate that befell Louis XVI. 
This crucial situation did not last long-. The treachery 
of the insurgent generals, Abisbal and Morillo, the 
capture of the Trocadero b.y the French and the im- 
pending fall of Cadiz, the last stronghold settled the 
fate of the revolution. Partly as a result of bribery, 
and partly to propitiate the conquerors, the liberal lead- 
ers, after having obtained from the king a promise of 
forgiveness, sent him to the French camp. The Cor- 
tez in return for 4,000,000 francs declared itself dis- 
solved and the king free. 

In this ignominious fashion the war that had been 
alike shameful to France and Spain M^as brought to an 
end. 

It brought France no real glory, cost her 200,000,000 
francs, made Chauteaubriand believe himself a states- 
man, and Angouleme believe him.self a g-eneral, but 
Louis obtained no influence in Spain, his advice was dis- 
regarded, and Angouleme left Spain in disgust at the 
stupid and cruel reaction which unhindered by the king's 
promise now began. Riego was captured in the Sierra 
Morena and with brutal mistreatment carried to the cap- 
ital where he was tied in a basket, and dragged at the 
heels of an ass to the plaza where he was executed with 
torture. Thousands shared his fate. The constitution 
was abolished, the inquisition recalled, the cloisters re- 
stored, and the patriots given over to the vengeance of 
the priests vv'ho did their work so thoroughly that after 
the lapse of nearly a hundred years it is a matter of 
astonishment to many in the modern world to knovv' that 
liberal ideas and constitutional government ever even 
for a brief space triumphed in Spain. Its endwas marked, 
perhaps forever, when the King of Spain on the sixteenth 
of October 1822, entered his capital on a triumphal wag- 
on twenty feet high, drawn by a hundred men, and 
surrounded and preceded by male and female dancers 
while the Spanish people lauded him to the skies. Thus 
with the firmament rending approbation of the populace 



76 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

of Paris, of Naples, and of Spain the Bourbons had been 
restored. In Spain the reaction celebrated its greatest 
triumph. 

In Portugal the reactionary, Dom Miguel, succeeded 
for a little while in leading his father in the path of the 
reaction, but Canning's influence caused the king to see 
his plans and banish him and Carlotta, his mother, while 
the constitutional government was carried on by the old 
King John until his death in 1826. 



CHAPTER VL 



THIC WAR FOR GREEK INDEPENDENCE. 



Since shortly after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, 
the Greeks had been completely under Turkish domin- 
ion. According- to the old law proclaimed by Moham- 
med, three alternatives were offered to a conquered na- 
tion, viz: The Koran, the tribute, or the sword. When 
the wild tribe of Seljucian Turks had been conquered 
by the armies of Islam, they had accepted the first of 
these alternatives and like all renegades became 
henceforth the most bitter and unrelenting- proselyters. 
Often they allowed only the alternative: "Accept the Ko- 
ran or the sword." But the Greekshad been allowed to 
accept the tribute horn of the trilemma and had throug-h 
all the centuries been enabled by means of their religion 
to uphold a kind of political unity. The religion of the 
Greek Church shows a case of arrested development. 
Some of the peculiarities are the granting- of commun- 
ion to children, trine immersion, government by patri- 
archs, and a married priesthood. A third of the chris- 
tians of the world belong to it. 

The Patriarch of Constantinople M^as not only recog- 
nized by the Turkish government, but was given the 
the rank of a Pasha of three horse tails with his seat in 
Constantinople and theexercise of high judicatory pow- 
ersin criminal cases. He had the right of sentencing to 
the galleys, to imprisonment, and to death offending 
members of his religious sect, and a Greek on v/hom he 
had pronounced the sentence of death could not escape 
it even by accepting "Islam" (Peace). Of course living 
in Constantinople under the eye of the Sultan, he was 
reg-arded as a hostage for the good behavior of bis peo- 
ple. The Great Synod over which he presided was re- 
garded in many ways as the highest court of appeal for 
the Greeks in civil suits, and the clergy in the provinces 
exercised judicial functions in questions of matrimony 
and heritage. 

The cities and v^illages in the Morea had the right to 



THE WAR FOR GREEK INDEPENDENCE. 79 

elect their own city officials or superintendents. These 
superintendents then for their part elected representa- 
tives called Primates or Kodjabaschis to the Capital in 
Tripolitsa where they bad an advisory right at the side 
of the Pasha and even sent a confidential agent called 
the Bekil to represent them at Constantinople. This 
provincial order of nobility the "Primates" won, as did 
the clergy, great power. Other influential classes were 
the Greek nobility of the Capital, the Fanariots (named 
fromthe porte of the light-tower which lay near the 
Patriarchial church) and the rice merchants. 

The character of the Turk is gracious, lazy, indolent, 
despising work, fatalistic, fairly honorable and upright, 
generous but when mad with fanaticism unspeakably 
bloodthirsty and cruel. Plis government is the worst on 
eartb. Its finances are secured by tax farming and the 
exploiting of the subject nations. The theory is that 
the subject nations must support the Turks. 
These subject nations, as they have a practical 
monopoly of trade and industry with no social stand- 
ing, quickly grow rich, mendacious, slick and unscrupu- 
lous. Tax farming paralyzes agriculture and corrupts 
trade. The number of the Greeks was some eleven 
millions and they had built up a great commercial navy. 
The development of the Greek merchant marine was 
far greater than that of Prussia or even Austria at 
this period. The Greeks surpassed the Turks not on- 
ly in v/ealth but in culture. Three tendencies, Russian, 
French and pure national, reveal themselves in their lit- 
erature. The first decades of the 19th century showed 
a rise of the spirit of the Rennaisance; the reviving of 
the memories of old Grecian greatness and culture. 
The Rennaisance of Greek culture had given a new 
birth to the rest of Europe; could it now give one to 
Greece? All Europe felt that it should do so. Byron is 
the great English exponent of this feeling (read in 
Child Harold his apostrophe to those isles of Greece), 
and sealed his faith with his blood. Out of this new 



80 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

spirit had grown up in 1812 the Society of "the Friends 
of the Muses" supposed to seek only artistic and scien- 
tific goals. Its president was the Russian Minister 
Capod'Istria, and the Czar and many other princes were 
its members. This society had an inner branch — the 
"Hetaerie of the Philiker" — whose secretly avowed pur- 
pose was "armed union of the Christians for the expul- 
sion of the Turks." Its members obeyed an unknown 
leader whom they hoped was the Czar himself. A net 
work of secret societies far more dangerous than the 
Burschenshaft and far better organized and with letter 
understood goals than the Carbonari, was built up. The 
great Faniarotic family of the Ypsilantis joined it and 
in 1818 its headquarters were removed to Constantino- 
ple itself. 

Greek revolutionary feeling- depended for sympathy 
and assistance on Russia. The reasons were manifold, 
the chief of them being the sharing of a common reli- 
gion. There was a universal antipathy in Europe to 
the Turk v/ho had not yet achieved the political or so- 
cial status of a European power. This feeling dated 
back to the Crusades. (Cf. prejudice against Francis 
I. for his alliance with the Turk against Chas. V.) The 
constitutional inclinations of the Czar for other lands 
were known. Ypsilantis was his favorite and adjutant; 
Kapodistrias his favorite and prime minister. Turkey, 
which blocked the Bosphorus, was the natural and hered- 
itar3^foeof the Russian politically and religiously. The 
very m-eaning of the word Czar assuccessoroftheCaesars 
of the Eastern Empire, called on Alexander to retake 
Byzantium and rectify the mistake of Peter the Great 
in building his capital on the frozen waters of the gulf 
of Finnland and the Baltic. (Catherine and others had 
attempted to rectify this mistake. Desire for a south- 
ern port one cause of the recent Russo-Japanese war.) 

In the Danube Provinces V\^allachia and Moldavia, in 
Kroatia, Bulgaria and Servia, in lower Macedonia and 
Albania there was a conflict of Austrian and Russian 



THE WAR FOR GREEK INDEPENDENCE. 01 

interests which would eventuallj^ lead to the indepen- 
dence or quasi independence of these countries. Such 
conflicts would seem to furnish the best of reasons why 
Russia should not let herself be ruled by Austrian policy. 

The times were favorable for an uprising". . Ali 
Pasha of Janina in Albania was engaged in a re- 
bellion against his Ottoman master Mahmond II., by 
which he hoped to wrest Epirus and all Greece from 
hira and form an independent kingdom. The rebel- 
lions of Pashas in Turkish history are many but Ali 
was one of the most decisive and capable characters 
known to east European history. A self made man, he 
had swung himself by his own efforts and against ter- 
rific opposition to the highest prominence. He had 
made himself master of Tepelini in Albania, the place 
of his birth, by an exceedingly^ clever trick. His ene- 
mies knew that he had a habit of taking an afternoon si- 
esta in the edge of the wood, and with a full knowledge 
of their plans he manag-ed to entice them into the idea 
of assassinating hira as he slept, bvit when the time 
came, instead of taking his customar}' nap he caught a 
goat and muzzling and tying it to keep it from bleating 
and kicking he wrapped it in his long mantle and laid it 
at his usual place in the edge of the wood and then hid 
himself and watched his enemies as they slipped near 
and fired a volle}^ of rifle balls into the goat which 
stretched out its tied legs convulsive!}' and died. The 
The murderers slipped away without discovering their 
mistake and Vv^ere celebrating" All's death with a drunk- 
en banquet when Ali and his companions attacked and 
killed the whole party. Thenceforth none dared dis- 
pute his authority. Through the customary means of 
guile, braverj^ cruelty, robbery and bribery he increased 
his power. His most difficult undertaking' had been the 
conquering of the mountain tribes of the Suliots, and he 
had even laid plans against the Venetian sea States. 

There is no course for a competent and successful 
Pusha except rebellion. Ability in a subordinate is in 



82 fOLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. - 

itself an intimidation to an absolute monarch. There is 
no resource for the tyrant but to cut off the heads that 
stand above the rest. Under a Sultan to succeed and to 
fail is equally dang-erous, one must paj?^ for either with 
his head. "A Pasha is a man", said Ali to his son, 
"who clothed in Ermine sits on a powder keg". Ali 
then was in rebellion against the Sultan and hoped to 
set Adrianople as the boundary between himself and 
his lord, a hope strengthened by his superstitious faith 
in a prophecy that had declared he would live to be 150 
years old and become ruler of the island of Corfu. In 
as much as Churchit Pasha, the governor of Morea, 
was the g^eneral engaged in trying to put down this re- 
bellion it left Greece denuded of the Turkish troops 
and made Ali anxious to welcome the Greeks as a] lies. 
Ali's brave resistance in his fortress Janina kept the 
greater part of the Turkish forces engaged until Feb. 
5, 1822, when through treacherj^ the "Lion of Epirus", 
or as he had loved to hear himself called the "new 
Phyrrus", was enticed out and slain. 

At the beginning of this outbreak the Greeks pre- 
pared to take advantage of it. Xanthos, an agent of the 
Hetaerie, went to St. Petersburg and offered the Presi- 
dency of the Hetaerie and the leadership of the Greek 
rebellion to Capod'Istria who, clever politician that he 
was, refused. It was then offered to the Czar's adju- 
tant, Ypsilanti, who got leave of absence and journeyed 
to the Danube provinces to accept, but he made the fa- 
tal error, against the advice of the Council of V7ar of the 
Hetaerie, of raising the banner of revolt in the Danube 
provinces. Thus too widely extending the area of con- 
flict and too deeply arousing- Austrian jealousies. On 
March 7, 1821, he crossed the Pruth and went to Jassy 
where he issued a patriotic address to the Greeks in 
which he called on them to awaken out of the long sleep 
which all Europe saw with regret, that a great power 
would protect them (.not the Almighty but Russia), and 
the successors of those who once had conquered the 



THE WAR FOR GREEK INDEPENDENCE. 83 

Persians oiig^ht to easily triumph over so contemptible 
a foe as the Turks. Beautiful words but there were 
two difficulties in the way of their fulfillment. One was 
that Ypsilanti had no military ability, and the other was 
that Alexander the Czar was even then at Laibach being 
converted fully to Metternich's doctrine of the divine 
rig-ht of rulers and the inherent deviltry of revolutions. 
The result we have already seen Prussia's former pol- 
ic5^ was abandoned and her true interests disreg"arded. 
Alexander renewed the alliance with Francis and Met- 
ternich and promised if necessary an army of 95,000 
men for the purpose of overthrowing- all revolutions. 
Ypsilanti Vv^as dismissed from the Czar's army and all 
connection and sympathy with theGreeks was disclaimed. 
This was not only a g-reat disappointment to the Greeks 
but it was an unpardonable political error for the Czar. 
A Richelieu in his place would have encourag-ed revolu- 
tions in the one land even while helping- to stamp it out 
in the others. This act of folly was all the more marked 
since according- to the peace of Bukarest (1812) the 
Porte dared not without specific Russian permission al- 
low Turkish troops to enter the Danube provinces. 
But the Czar having refused his assistance to the patri- 
ots, at the battle of Dragatschan the Turks, althoug-h 
smaller in numbers, easily defeated the Faniarot. His 
army was disbanded, he himself fled to Austria, was ar- 
rested by the g-overnment and imprisoned in the for- 
tresses of Munkacz and Theresienstadt for six years 
and was only set free in 1827 on Russian solicitation and 
died the next year in Vienna. Some of his officers dis- 
played more ability and more bravery. The Olympian 
Georgias led a part of the insurg-ents into Moldavia and 
threw himself into the convent of Sekka v/hich he de- 
fended for three days with only 350 men gua.rding the 
approach which led through a defile against 1500 Turks 
and when he was at last flanked and surprised from the 
rear, lie and eleven comrades blew up the bcU tov%'er in 
wliicb tbev had taken refu^-e after it had filled with 



84 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

Turks. The remnant of his little force capitulated but 
were nevertheless massacred. This event was the 
combined Alamo and Goliad of Roumanian history. 

While this was going on another scene was taking- 
place in Constantinople. When the Czar had refused 
recognition the Patriarch at Constantinople had been 
forced b5^ the Sultan to hurl the bann of excommunica- 
tion against the Greek rebels but the fanatical ire of the 
Moslems was not to be so easily appeased. A number 
of the Fanariots or Greek aristocrats in the service of 
the Porte were murdered and passing Christians were 
fired on, but at the Easter festival the crowning iniqui- 
ty occurred. The aged Greek Patriarch Gregorios, 
with three archbishops and several priests, was cap- 
tured at the cathedral door and hung at the arch of the 
middle door of the Fanar church. The Sultan openly 
exulted at the sight and reviled the Patriarch's corpse 
which he caused to be taken down by Jews, dragged 
through the streets and cast into the sea, after indigni- 
ties which had not been meted out to a pontiff since the 
days of Pope Formosus. '"" ^ 

The attempted revolution in the Danube provinces 
had already caused the fires of insurrection to break 
out in fury in the Morea and this sacreligious murder 
gave it the character of a religious war. Its Peter the 
HermitwasPapaFlesas, a monk, aided by the Arch bishop 
Germanos, who had in Patras called the people to their 
weapons, had led them through the streets behind a 
cross and had given to the warriors the Lord's supper 
on a public altar. Its secular leaders were Petrobei, 
the head of the Mainots, who called himself the descen- 
dant of the Spartans, and Kolokotronis, a wild moun- 
tain chief from whose tribe no man had ever died a 
natural death. Their warcry was, "The Turks shall 
not remain in Morea nor in the entire world." It was 
not long until Kolokotronis took Tripolitsa, its doors 
opened hy the Greeks within, and according to re- 
port covered the streets with the bodies of 32000 dead 



THE WAR FOR GREEK INDEPENDENCE. 85 

Turks so that from the gate to the Palace the horse of 
Kolokotronis did not once place his hoof to the ground 
but traversed the entire distance on the corpses of the 
dead. This report was exaggerated although the dead 
had perhaps numbered more than ten thousand. 

Abroad the murder of the patriarch was bound to ex- 
ert great influence in favor of the Greeks. It changed 
Metternich no iota but even Kaiser Francis said that 
such a blow was just as bad as if it had struck the Pope. 
How much more it ought to have meant to the Greek 
Catholic Russian Emperor. In fact the Russian Am- 
bassador in Constantinople, Stroganoff, said in a note of 
the 18th of July, 1821, "The Porte has earnestly endan- 
gered its rights to exist near the Christian powers of 
Europe" and demanded satisfaction, which not being 
granted, left him no alternative save to leave Constanti- 
nople. His departure did not discourag-e Metternich. 
He tried to get the Porte to yield and when it refused 
was able to induce the Czar to make concessions and 
even to take up diplomatic relations through another 
channel. This was the ultimate triumph of his diplo- 
macy. Hitherto he bad been able to cover the divine 
right of ki^-jo-^ with the mantle of Christianity. Now he 
had Christianity on the one side and legitimacy on 
the other and was still able to persuade a Greek Catho- 
lic Emperor that a Moslem Sultan "by the grace of God" 
m'ust be supporterl even when he murdered a Patriarch. 
But Metternich, although he was able to hold Russia in 
bounds then and until the death of Alexander, could not 
reverse the sentiment of entire Europe nurtured since 
the passionate preaching of the Crusades by the Popes 
against the Usurper and the Inlidel. However even 
thus early the English government assumed its role of 
the protector of the Turk. The English king and Lord 
Castlereagh united with Metternich in bringing about a 
treaty of peace between the Sultan and the Czar on con- 
dition that Turkish troops should be withdrawn from 
the Northern thcatro of war across the Danube. 



86 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

But the tiger had been let loose in the Turk and he made 
himself every day more unendurable, and soon all Europe was 
shocked by the horrible massacre that has been fittingly termed 
the "Blood Bath of Scio," which occurred on the coast of 
Asia Minor opposite Smyrna. In contrast to the other island- 
ers the Chiots had hitherto been content with playing the role 
of inactive observers. The other Greeks regarded them as lazy 
and stupid and had as a proverb, "A clever Chidt is as rare as a 
green horse." Instigated by Psara, a small but unsuccessful 
attempt had been made to raise an insurrection. This was 
repeated in March, 1822, with assistance from Sam.o';;, and the 
Turkish garrison M^as on the point of surrendering when the 
Turkish fleet under Kara Ali came to their relief. The attack- 
ers withdrew into Samos. The Chiots immediately surren- 
dered, after receiving a promise of forgiveness and protection, 
but no sooner had they surrendered their weapons than there 
began a horrible man-hunt. Twenty-three thousand men were 
murdered and forty-seven thousand m.en, women and children 
were sold into slavery. This was also in Easter week, and 
again did the Turkish method of celebrating Easter cause a 
cry of revenge to go up from all Hellas and echo in all 
Europe. 

This horrible deed was speedily avenged by Kanaris, the 
Kolokotronis of the sea. On the night of June 19, the last 
night of the month Ramasan, the month of fasting (no food is 
eaten from sunrise to sunset — it celebrates Abraham's sacri- 
fice of Isaac) came the feast of Bairam. While the Turks 
were celebrating this feast and carelessness reigned on board 
of the fleet, Kanaris reached with his fire sihips, the vessels, and 
even the flag ship of the admiral, which had on board 3,000 
men, and Kapudan Pasha himself. Kanaris exploded the flag 
ship, and as it went up in a hell of sm.oke and detonations and 
flames, he cried, "Look! look! at the beautiful illumination! 
Victory to the cross!" After this fashion the Turks and 
Greeks celebrated the religious festivals of each other. In re- 
venge, a repetition of the Blood Bath was visited on Scio by 
the Turks, and this time the desolation was made so complete 



THE WAR FOR GREEK INDEPENDENCE. 87 

that by the month of August, of the original 100,000 inhab- 
itants of the island, only 2,000 were left alive. The year 1822 
was otherwise unlucky for the Greeks, as the death of Ali 
Pasha left the entire army of Churchit Pasha free to attack 
Greece proper. Moreover, the partisanship and party spirit 
of the Greeks (the curse of a democracy) led to what threat- 
ened to be fatal divisions, and yet the double campaign of the 
Turks against Corinth and Messolinghi failed at both points, 
the latter owing to the bravery of the Suliot chieftain, Marko 
Bozzaris, and of Mavrokordatis, who successfully repelled an 
attack made on Christmas nii^ht, 1822, in which Omer Brionis, 
the betrayer of Ala Pasha, was beaten o-ff. 

Meantime even the Chios outrage did not incline Alexander 
to war; instead Kapo d'Istria was given a long vacation, almost 
equivalent to a dismissal. Alexander visited in Vienna, and 
Greek representatives who sought to see him were not admitted 
to his presence. And yet this inaction was lucky for Greece, 
for had Russia entered into the war too soon, it had been for 
her merely a change of masters. But if Russia had failed her, 
the suicide's hand had brought her a new friend. In August, 

1822, Castlereagh had cut his throat and Canning, the liberal 
— one m.ay almost say the first great liberal statesman of Eng- 
land — was made minister of foreign aftairs, and in February, 

1823, he recognized the Greeks as a belligerent power and enti- 
tled to all the rights of war. 

The year 1823 passed without advantage for the Turks, the 
only event of importance was the defeat of Omer Brionis at 
Karpenesi by Marko Bozzarris, who, with 350 Suliots, attacked 
by night the advance guard of Omer's army, numbering some 
5,000 men, and defeated it, but it cost the life of Bozzarris. We 
know him by two monuments; one, the poem, "At midnight in 
his guarded tent," etc.; the other is carved in marble — the little 
half-clad Greek girl with Psyche hair and features classic yet 
babyish reclining half raised on the monumental slab and spell- 
ing cut with wondering eyes and hesitating fingers the Greek 
letters of the name of IMarko Bozzarris, forms one of the treas- 
ur:"; of the National Museum at Athens. 



88 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

Morea during the entire year saw no enemy, but internecine 
strife waged its bitter course and did not end its first campaign 
until June, 1824, when Konduriotis, the president of the na- 
tional assem.bly, gained control, and the rough chieftain, Kolo- 
kotronis, deeply bowed through the death of a son, was imipris- 
oned in the cloister at St. Elias, on the island Hydra, grimly 
prophesying that his country would soon need him and recall 
him with honor. Party lines were drawn as to whether the 
war should be prosecuted on the mainland or the islands, and 
as to what and how much foreign help should be used. He had 
represented the m.ainland as against the islands and the English 
party. 

The situation now lay so that Turkey and Greece were both 
exhausted and neither able to win a permanent victory over the 
other. It was the time when the great powers, or at least 
allies from some sources, must enter the contest. 

The Sultan turned for aid to his great vassal, Mchammet 
Ali, in Egypt, vv^ho had already proved himself dangerous by 
his ambitious plans, and his desire for Syria. 

In response to the appeal, as early as June, 1823, Ali's step- 
son, Hassan, or Ibrahim, landed in Crete and began a reign of 
terror there. In the stalactitic grotto of Hermes 500 women 
and children were shut up and suffocated with fire and smoke. 
At Melato, where 2,000 inhabitants had surrendered to him, 
he sold the v/omen into slavery, burned the priests and cut 
down all the others in cold blood. At Psara the scenes of 
Chios were duplicated, 17,000 were killed or sold into slavery. 
The significance of Ibrahim's entry into the conflict was two- 
fold ; he brought a fleet greater than the Grecian fleet and an 
army trained in European tactics, under French instructors 
(Soliman Bey), but composed of utter barbarians. His plan 
was to murder all the inhabitants of Morea, or transport them 
to Egypt and re-people the country with Arabians. His coming 
had the good effect of uniting the Greeks. Their fleet harassed 
him greatly and, in fact, defeated him and drove him to the 
Syrian coast, and, as they thought, out of the contest, but when 
the Greek fleet had triumphantly returned homeward he sud- 



THE WAR FOR GREEK INDEPENDENCE. 89 

denly descended on Morea, gairicd die harbor of Navarino and 
the Island of Spacteria, and set out to aid Reshid Pasha in the 
siege of Mesolinghi, before which he arrived January 9, 1826. 
The Sultan had given to Reshid the ominous warning, "Meso- 
linghi or your head," and so, though unable to take it, he had still 
remained in the trenches outside, before which trenches Ibrahim 
now appeared, and looking at the fortifications, laughed at the 
fence, which he "would take in fourteen days." But the prep- 
arations inside those walls and the defenders there had been 
inspired by Lord Byron, who, recently killed, had mingled his 
bones with those of Norman and Marko Bozzarris, under the 
cannon-crum.bled ruins of that fence, and although the inhab- 
itants were living on worms and insects, sea weed and the dried 
hides of animals, they held out despite Ibrahim's arrival by land 
and the previous Turkish blockade by sea (commencing in No- 
vember, 1825) until the 22nd of April, 1826. Then the des- 
perate garrison, the three thousand armed and three thousand 
weaponless in their midst, attempted to break out at midnight. 
The result was utter failure and sickening m_assacre. The 
Egyptians alone collected three thousand smitten-off heads. 

In fifteen months Ibrahim had subdued all Morea and West 
Hellas. Athens alone still held out for the Greeks. Its hero 
was the scamp Karaiskatis. His confession of faith ran: "I 
can be either angel or devil ; I do not deny it ; for the future I 
v.'ill be angel." He fought like both for the sake of Athens, 
but in vain. Turkish victory seemed now assured, but the 
Eg\'ptian had already spent 25,000,000 Spanish dollars and did 
not know where he was to get his pay, and hence did not feel 
inclined to push his campaign. This gave the Greeks a chance 
to recover. In April, 1827, two English soldiers of fortune 
were put at the head of the Greek forces — Cochrane, as high 
admiral, and Church, with 10,000 men, as generallissimo of all 
Greeks, and England recognized the Greeks as belligerents; 
but all this was not able to prevent the fall of the Acropolis in 
the next month. 

The fall of Mesolinghi and the martyr death of Byron had 
aroused the Philhellenists all over Europe. Wilhelm Mueller, 
the German poet; Louis of Bavaria, the Swiss banker, Eynard, 



90 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

and in France even the legitimist Chaeuteaubriand took up the 
Greek cause. 

Miaulis journeyed to England and asked Canning to take 
Greece under English protection. Canning did not dare attempt 
it alone, but in the last months of the czar's life brought about 
the rupture and dissolution of the Holy Alliance, that had 
grown until it included every great povt^er except England and 
the Pope. 



CHAPTER VII. 



THE FALL OF THE HOLY ALLIANCE, THE BATTLE OF NAVARINO 
AND THE CPs.EATION OF THE KINGDOM OF GREECE. 



Death helped the solution of Canning's problem. On De- 
cember I, 1825, Alexander died at Taganrog, and his successor, 
Nicholas, was not the man to be the slave of Mettemich. Two 
events should be noted in regard to his accession. First, his 
older brother Constantine was the legal heir, but he had been 
unhappily married, and, deeply loving the Countess Grudsinska 
of Poland, he had himself made the proposition that he separate 
from his wife, marry the countess and give up his birthright in 
favor of his brother. This arrangement had been secretly 
acceded to and he had married his countess. Nevertheless, on 
the death of Alexander, Nicholas at once proclaimed his absent 
brother king, and when the czar's will was read making him 
successor, he still refused to accept until Constantine again sent 
in his declination of the honor, saying he thought it doubtful 
as to which was the greatest sacrifice, to accept or reject the 
throne. Meantime, in Poland, Constantine had proclaimed 
Nicholas czar, so we have here in darkest Russia the beautiful 
spectacle of tvv'o brothers, each proclaiming the absent brother 
czar. And the marvelous thing was that both seem to have 
been in earnest. 

Nicholas, who was married to the Prussian princess Char- 
lotte, was by far the more capable of the two, and when the 
renevv^ed assurance came from Poland that Constantine pre- 
ferred his countess to his throne, Nicholas proclaimed himself 
czar. The soldiers thus called on to swear allegiance to two 
different rulers within a few days made it the occasion of a 
mutiny of several regiments. The conspiracy had been plan- 
ning for some time, and the leaders had liberal ideas, but the 
comm.on soldiers were so ignorant that when told they were to 
shout for Constantine and the Constitution they naively asked 
if the Constitution was the wife of Constantine, and were al- 
lowed so to believe. The rebellion known as the Dekabristen 
Mutiny, from the name of the palace regiments engaged, was 



92 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

easily put down with a few volleys, and Nicholas sat securely 
on his throne. Metternich, who knew Constantine to be 
wholly under his thumb, had greeted him with delight as em- 
peror, saying that the Russian romance was now at an end and 
the Russian histon,^ would begin ; but what was his chagrin then 
to find not Constantine, the weak, but Nicholas, the strong, on 
the throne, pursuing a policy friendly toward England and 
Greece. Canning in England and Nicholas in Russia mark 
the end of Austrian influence as the predominant factor in those 
countries, and of the Holy Alliance. It had broken on the rocks 
of American, Portuguese and Greek independence. A shifting 
of the powers results in an agreement, suggested by Canning, 
between England, France and Russia, to unite in a joint demand 
on Turkey to force lier to accept mediation. 

The sultan attempted to parry the blow by concessions to 
the czar in regard to Bessarabia, Servia, and the Danube 
provinces, in the treaty of Akkerman, October, 1826. 

The original agreement between England and Russia did not 
contemplate the absolute independence of Greece, which was to 
have its own government, but to remain tributary. Sentiment 
was strong in England for British interposition in behalf of 
the Greeks, but politically it could hardly be justified on the 
same grounds as interference in favor of Portugal and America. 
Any weakening of Turkey must be to Russia's advantage, and, 
in fact, in 1821 Russia had asked the significant "Oriental 
question," whether the continued existence of Turkey in Europe 
were possible? Mahmoud II., the sultan, recognized in Russia 
his real foe, and hence the concessions were made to her. 

The sultan, himself a reformer and introducer of European 
ways, in attem.pting an arm.y reform, found himself confronted 
by an insurrection of the Janizaries, such as had cost his father 
Selim his life. The Janizaries, a kind of Praetorian guard, had 
becomie a strong corporation with many privileges and guilty of 
many abuses of their power. The attempt to divide their regi- 
ments caused a mutiny that was speedily and completely sup- 
pressed by the new troops. The rebels were executed by scores. 
The great tree in the palace yard where they were suspended 



FALL OF HOLY ALLIANCE— BATTLE OF NAVARINO, ETC. 93 

by hooks in their chins is still shown to visitors. It was made 
a penal offense to use the word Janizary. A pasha asked Des- 
granges, the French ambassador, "How long did your revolu- 
tion last?" "Twentj'-five or thirty years," was the reply. 
"Write to Paris that we have accomplished one in twenty-three 
minutes." The insurrection weakened, however, the Turkish 
power of resistance. 

The death of Canning, on August 8, 1827, (successor Wel- 
lington), revived the hopes of the sultan and Metternich. 

On July 6, 1827, the Treaty of London was agreed to be- 
tween England, France and Russia, to compel an armistice and 
to place the Greek provinces in the same relations to Russia as 
the Danube provinces. An allied fleet was sent to check Ibra- 
him. The English were commanded by Sir Edward Codring- 
ton (with the ambiguous command to enforce an armistice by 
cannon shot, but "not in a hostile spirit") ; the French by De 
Rigny; the Russian by Count Hayden. They proceeded to the 
harbor of Navarino. Meantime Ibrahim's activity in the 
Morea made it certain that the Greek revolution was to be 
quenched in streams of blood. The Greeks were reduced to the 
guerrilla warfare of scattered bands. 

In September the Greek patriarch begged and received from 
the porte forgiveness for five provinces. 

On the 20th of October the sultan asked Austrian mediation 
against the allied fleets, but the same day there occurred 

THE BATTLE OF NAVARINO. 

In the harbor of Navarino lay 126 Turkish and Eg>'ptian 
ships of war, ready to inflict on Hydra the fate of Chios and 
Psara. 

In September Codrington had obtained from Ibrahim the 
promise of the cessation of hostilities, but the Greeks still keep- 
ing up desultory attacks, Ibrahim claimed release from 
his promise and started out to make a desert of 
Messenia. He had destroyed sixty thousand fig and twent}^- 
flve thousand olive trees, rapidly making it incapable of support- 
ing a population. The Turks had in the harbor 89 vessels, not 



94 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

counting the transports, with 2,438 cannon; the allies 27 ships, 
with 1,270 cannon. Five fleets lay anchored within pistol shot 
of each other. A Turkish fire ship refusing to get out of the 
way of the frigate Dartmouth, a boat load of English sailors 
set cut to cut her cable, a pistol shot was fired at them at half 
past two, and from then until six P.M. one of the most fearful 
of naval battles raged. The ships were all in rifle shot of each 
other, and there in that narrow harbor basin for four hours 
3,500 cannon bellowed, punctuated by the explosions of maga- 
zines. Sixty of Ibrahim's ships were utterly destroyed and six 
thousand men killed. The harbor was covered with frag- 
ments. All night long could be heard the explosions of dis- 
abled ships blown up by the Turks. The allies were also se- 
verely injured in damaged ships, although only 540 men were 
killed. Ibrahim displayed the white flag, but both sides had to 
retire to repair damages. Ibrahim remained in Morea, contin- 
ued his devastations, and the next month sent much booty to 
Egypt and received reinforcements from there. In England, 
where Wellington had succeeded Canning, the king, George 
IV., in a speech from the throne, referred to Navarino as an 
"untoward event." The battle advanced Russia's plans; France 
rejoiced, but the Austrian emperor declared the event had all 
the marks of assassination. 

Before the news came the ambassadors had asked the porte 
how an act of hostility against Ibrahim's fleet would be re- 
garded. The answer was "an unborn child, whose sex no man 
can know, has no name." But when the official news came the 
porte sent a further reply: "The child is born and its name is 
cruel and grisly violence," and satisfaction was demanded, and 
refused. The ministers were given their passports, all Eng- 
lish, French and Russians were banished from. Turkey, and 
twelve thousand Catholic Armenians were banished to Angora. 
Russia declared war ; a French army was ordered to the Morea ; 
and Mohamet Ali recalled Ibrahim, because Codrington's fleet 
on its own initiative threatened Alexandria, and Greece was 
free. 

Russia's campaign under Witgennstein, and the czar as "pa- 



THE WAR FOR GREEK INDEPENDENCE. 95 

rade general," was practically a failure, although several Dan- 
ube fortresses were taken. Russia's plans drove England and 
Austria together. Metternich was for armed interference, but 
for once in his life was opposed by Emperor Francis, and by 
France, and was forced to assure Russia that no hostilities were 
intended. 

The Russian cam.paign of 1828, in Asiatic Turkey, was more 
successful. The mighty fortress Kars, and Erzeroum were 
captured by Paskiewitch, the captor of Erivan in 1827 in a war 
against Persia, wherein he gained the title "Erivanski." The 
Persian war was on the point of renewal in 1829, on account 
of the murder of the Russian am.bassador, but in order to have 
his hands free against Turkey, Nicholas accepted a personal 
apology tendered by the nephew of the Shah in St. Petersburg. 
Paskiewitch was victorious against the Turks in Armenia, while 
Diebitch, by his celebrated passage of the Balkans, gained the 
name of "Sabalanski," superseded Witgeinstein, and after sev- 
eral battles captured Adrianople, "the key" to the porte, but his 
army was exhausted and reduced to 20,000 men. England, 
moreover, had determined not to let Constantinople fall, and 
had Mahmoud not been discouraged by the fatalistic enervation 
of his troops and renewed mutinies of the Janizaries, he could 
have annihilated the Russians. The discouragement of both 
sides resulted in the peace of Adrianople, September 14, 1829, by 
which Russia received the costs of the war, but surrendered 
most of her conquests. 

Free passage of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus was given 
to the commerce of all nations. The stipulations of Akkerman 
were renewed, and the porte recognized the independence of 
Greece, whose troubles were by no means at an end. The pow- 
ers made Capo d'Istria president, but his arbitrary absolutistic 
rule made him hated. Some of Plato's writings were prohib- 
ited at Plato's home because they inveighed against tyrants. 
He was finally assassinated at Nauplia, in 1831, greatly to the 
delight of the Greeks. 

Leopold of Coburg had refused the Greek throne in 1830 
because Turkey still retained several Greek provinces. The 



96 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

guardian powers, England, France and Russia, raised to the 
throne Otto, the second son of King Ludwig of Bavaria, and 
forced Turkej^ to grant him an enlargement of territory. Until 
1835 the government was under a regency, but King Otto now 
assumed control at Athens, which he had made the capital city, 
and reigned until 1862. His troubled reign is of small im- 
portance for world history. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



FRANCE BEFORE THE JULY REVOLUTION. 



Villele's ministry could have carried on a sensible, conserva- 
tive government after the campaign in Spain, and at the same 
time have met the most pressing demands of the Liberals, for 
these last had too few votes in the Chamber to demand much. 
But if they were weak in the Chamber of Deputies, they had 
power enough in the Chamber of Peers to block ultra reaction- 
ary measures. The ultra royalists, moreover, despite all elec- 
toral changes in their favor, were not strong enough to force 
the cabinet from the golden way of moderation, if it showed a 
strong will, and the king continued to favor the moderate 
course. Unfortunately for France, however, Villele under- 
stood neither the advantage nor the imperative needs of his po- 
sition, hut without joining in the demands of Artois' party in 
Parliament (the extreme Right), was eager to show himself 
pleased with the personal reactionary leanings of the heir to the 
throne, in order to keep his position in case of a change of rulers. 
As an act of worship to the rising sun, he made the successful 
ending of the campaign in Spain an occasion to dissolve the 
Chamber, in the hope of cleansing it of all Liberal members. By 
means of unheard of violence, even going so far as to falsif}'' 
the voting lists, he was so successful that in the new elections 
in Februarj^ and March, 1824, only 17 Liberals were elected, 
and the opposition on the extreme Right also suffered a con- 
siderable loss. 

Without difficulty the m.inistry carried through its culminat- 
ing electoral m.anipulations. The Chambers granted that the 
partial renewal which should take place every year, according 
to the constitution, should be superseded by a general and simul- 
taneous election and the election of all the memibers once every 
seven years. But Villele now had to experience the fact that 
it is not entirely a good thing for the ruling party not to have a 
strong opposition. As his followers had nothing to fear from 
their opponents, they split up into factions; the original unanim- 
ity disappeared more and more, and the Moderates, who would 
h.ave supported the ministry loyally against a Clerical or Lib- 



98 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

eral opposition, in the dearth of this gradually separated them- 
Eelves from the majority. On the other hand the ministry, by 
its violent measures, leaned more and more to the Right, with- 
out drawing to itself the ultras, or disarming their personal 
hatred. Villele unwisely added new enemies. He forced Cha- 
teaubriand, M^ho had deserted him in the Chamber of Peers in 
the matter of lowering the rate of interest on the debt, to re- 
sign, and so turned a sharp pen and the influential "Journal 
des Debats" against the ministrj^ The whole press took up 
the fight. Villele secretly bought several important papers, but 
the only result was that they lost readers and influence. 

The reintroduction of the censorship, accomplished by the 
royal prerogative according to the law of 1822, showed itself a 
poor weapon, and the reorganization of the Council of State, 
the Liberal members of which were replaced by men from the 
Congregation, made enemies without creating new friends. 
Men saw in all these acts a desire to gain favor in the eyes 
of the future monarch, and in fact in the last months of Louis 
XVin.'s life Villele took no important step without consult- 
ing Artois. Louis became more and more inactive and indif- 
ferent to government matters and made no objection to his 
ministers' relations to Artois. The weakness of old age brought 
on his gradual dissolution and on the 17th of September, 1824, 
Louis XVIIL died. 

His people had looked upon him without love and without 
hate ; but his death was not without a manifestation of s}'m- 
pathy. The people regretted "to exchange king Log for king 
Stork. According to everything that was known of Artois one 
might expect a government completely dominated by the priests. 
Against all expectations the government of the new king, 
Charles X., came in smoothly. He made declaration of his 
purpose to uphold the Constitution, to which he had sworn alle- 
giance as a citizen, proclaimed a wide reaching edict of am- 
nesty, the abolition of the censor, and by these and similar acts 
aroused high hopes and an unexpected trust on the part of the 
people, but this did not last a long time. The fleeting hopes 
that Liberal ministers v/ould take Villele's place were not real- 



FRANCE BEFORE THE JULY REVOLUTION. 99 

ized. Public opinion was varied and uncertain. At first the 
impression made was sometimes good and sometimes bad. Peo- 
ple murmured when i6o generals of the empire were pensioned 
and dismissed with one stroke of the pen. They applauded 
when the beloved duke of Orleans was given the title of royal 
highness, which Louis had denied him; they were angry when 
the ministry claimed the right for the king to allow the found- 
ing of nunneries by royal prerogative ; and again they were 
glad when the monarch agreed to transfer his personal property 
to the State according to the custom of former kings. But this 
uncertainty did not last long. The boundless authority which 
the Clerical party had over Charles X. soon became boldly man- 
ifest. On church questions the Chamber of Peers failed to 
shov/ the opposition which the Liberals had expected from it. 
It ratified a sacrilege law which punished theft of church fur- 
niture with lifelong servitude in the galleys, the breaking into a 
church with death, and desecration of the host with the punish- 
ment visited on paricide, a barbarity which its defenders sought 
to justify by saying that the temple desecraters were thereby 
only sent to their rightful judge. An opposition not less, but 
]e?s well {cutidec, was caused by the law which gave to the em- 
igra'.its Vvho^e property was appropriated during the Revolution 
a billion francs compensation. Although much can be said 
against this law, much can also be said in its favor, the main 
thing being that even after it was paid, it left a surplus of nine 
million francs in the treasury, after providing for a budget of 
nine hundred million. France was prosperous. Charles X. still 
lioped that this measure would raise the position of the aristoc- 
racy, and desired to find his support among them, and to further 
this end proposed a law of entail similar to the English law, 
but was chagrinned to find it defeated by the peers. Failing to 
find support from the nobles, he was driven to the Clerical 
party for aid. The param.ount influence of the clergy was 
c.hown by the sclemn farce that was played on tlie occasion of 
bis coronation at Rhiems. The anointing flask — the "Ampulla" 
— which an angel brought douai from heaven at the baptism 
of Chlodwiz, and which had been used in the coronation of the 



100 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

P'"pceding kings of France, had been destro^^ed during the revo- 
lution by order of the Convention, and the sacred oil had been 
smeared on the shoes of the blasphemous, but it was now dis- 
covered that a faithful priest had saved several of the flask 
fragments, to which a few drops of oil had adhered, and now 
the Mci^iteur announced to the "Faithful" that the same oil, 
miraculously multiplied, which had been used on all the French 
Icings since Clovis, would also flow over the brow of Charles X. 

So great was the Clerical influence that the Jesuits v/ere re- 
rtored to power, although still legally prohibited, and it was 
/*^ even reported that the king in his monk's robe, as a member of 
the order, was obliged to lay all his plans for government be- 
fore his general in the order. The Clerical influence became so 
threat that even grooms and maid servants had to get recom- 
mendations from the clergy in order to find employment by 
the court and courtiers. 

The peers were influential in checking much bad legislation, 
especially a peculiarly oppressive gag law for the press, against 
which every newspaper in Paris had protested. The king was 
forced to withdraw it. Symptoms of disaffection had appeared 
in tlie national guard. The king was angered by its crying 
"down with the ministry and down with the Jesuits," although 
it had cried at the same time "long live the king." He ordered 
the dissolution of the national guard, mustered them out of 
service and introduced again the censor for the press. A dan- 
gerous triumvirate now opposed Charles — the newspapers, the 
national guard and the peers. 

The king, angered that the peers had forced him into a blind 
alley from which there was no progress possible, determined to 
revenge himself by the creation of enough new peers to pack the 
upper house and m,ake it subservient. He therefore named sev- 
enty-six new peers, dissolved the lower house, raised the censor- 
ship and ordered a new election. The raising of the censorship 
was intended to gain popularity and disarm the enmity of the 
newspapers, but the king was hoist by his own petard, all classes 
were indignant, all joined against the king. Paris returned 
only members of the opposition, and when the new Parliament 



FRANCE BEFORE THE JULY REVOLUTION. 101 

was elected it was found that the majorit}^ against the king was 
three hundred to one hundred and twenty-five. Villele at once 
gave over the ministry to the Viscount Martignac. 

Martignac was not really popular, nor a partisan of either 
side. His enemies laughingly represented him as saying, "I love 
papa, the good God and mamma, the "Revolution." As he could 
not command a majority in Parliament, the king was glad 
enough to dismiss him after the session of Parliament was ad- 
journed in August, 1829, and gave the ministry to Prince 
Polignac, at that time ambassador in London, a noted leader of 
the ultras. His selection dem.onstrated that the king had aban- 
doned the principle of ministerial responsibility and had entered 
on a course of absolutism. Polignac's very name was a pro- 
gramme of reaction. The "Journal des Debats" greeted the new 
ministry with these words: "The men who novv^ lead the govern- 
ment, even if they wanted to be m.oderate, could not be, the 
hate which their names aAvake in men's minds is too deep not 
to be reciprocated ; feared by France they will make France 
fearful," and it closed with the prophetical exclamation: "Un- 
fortunate France! Unfortunate king!" The public in Paris 
and in all France believed he meant to attack the Charter. A 
wit said bitterly that Polignac's intelligence and Talleyrand's 
honor were on a par. 

Polignac hoped to make himself popular by his bril- 
liant foreign policy. He had great plans for changing 
the entire map of Europe, pushing Turkey off the card, giv- 
ing Servia and Bosnia to Austria and the Danube principalities 
to Russia; the balance of the Balkan peninsula was to be given 
to the king of the Netherlands, who would give Belgium to 
France, the Dutch colonies to England, and Holland to Prus- 
sia and Saxony, while the Prussian provinces were to be formed 
into a new kingdom, Austrasia. These plans were approved 
by the cabinet and even sent to St. Petersburg, but the news of 
the peace of Adrianople prevented their gaining the attention of 
the Russian cabinet. There remained only one possibility for 
glory in foreign war. Since 1827 France had broken off diplo- 
matic intercourse with the Dey of Algiers. The row began with 



102 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

a money squabble between the Dey and two French citizens. 
The Dey had written to Charles X. and had received no an- 
swer. He complained of this neglect to the French ambassador, 
who insolently replied that "the king of France did not ex- 
change letters with a Dey of Algiers," whereupon the enraged 
Dey struck him in the face with a fly brush. Satisfaction being 
denied, the consul was recalled, a two-years' blockade of the 
port followed, and finally, in response to an ultimatum, the Dey 
had fired on a French ship, so Polignac in his hour of need found 
a casus belli ready for his use. At first he had invited the 
great Mohamed Ali, of Egypt, to conquer Algiers, but finally 
his other and more ambitious plans for reshuffling Europe hav- 
ing failed, he devoted his personal attention to the Algiers 
question. On the 7th of February, 1830, the cabinet declared 
wai*. 

While the preparations for war were zealously hurried the 
king opened the Parliament on the second of March in person, 
and, as he announced to his family, "as king." Ke expressed 
his assurance that the representatives of the land would support 
him in his good intentions, but he declared also, in an almost 
threatening tone, that he would find the power, as well in the 
love of the French as in his own firm decision, to get rid of 
punishable intrigues and crooked methods of opposition. He 
got so hot in saying this that in order to cool himself of¥ he 
took Oil his hat and accidentally let it fall on the floor. By the 
grim hum.or of accident it was the Duke of Orleans who picked 
it up, an event which soon came to be looked on as a prem.oni- 
tion. 

In the House of Deputies the answer to the speech from the 
throne lamented the lack of confidence which seemed to be the 
leading thought of the government. It pronounced this lack of 
confidence "insulting, disquieting and threatening to the free- 
dom of the people," and demanded between the lines a change 
of m.inistry to correspond with the parliamentary majority and 
the v/ishcs of the nation. Charles' ansvv^er vv'as that his con- 
clusions were unalterable and that the interests of the people 
forbade him to depart from themi. On the day after the re- 



FRANCE BEFORE THE JULY REVOLUTION. 103 

ception of the address the Parliament was adjourned until the 
third of September. The dissolution of the Parliament was 
also decided on, but there was hesitation in announcing it as 
the king was waiting on good news from the seat of the war in 
Africa in order to influence the elections in favor of the govern- 
ment. On the 25th of May the expedition had departed from 
the port of Toulouse, one hundred and seven ships of war, with 
27,000 sailors and marines and 37.000 soldiers, under the com- 
mand of Bourmont. It landed in Algiers in June, and by 
the fourth of July, Algiers with 48,000,000 francs in 
money, 11,000,000 in munitions and 1,500 g^^^'S, was in the 
hands of the French. The Dey v/as allowed to depart with his 
private property and his family. The expedition was thus a 
brilliant success. In six weeks from the tim.e of sailing and 
only three weeks from the time of landing it had accomplished 
its end, but the news came too late to affect the elections, even 
if its purpose had not been too well known for it to have been 
effectual. In vain is the snare spread in the sight of any bird. 
All parties had united against the ministry. The newspapers, 
led by the younger Thiers, then thirty-three years old, led the 
fight against the governm.ent, for the belief was widespread that 
the king intended an attack on the Charter. Even from for- 
eign lands came timely warnings. The czar sent a reminder 
that Alexander had become surety not alone for the sovereignty 
of the Bourbons, but also for the Constitution. Even Metter- 
nich sent an earnest warning not to stir up a revolution unless 
they were certain to conquer it. Polignac answered these warn- 
ings with the steadfast assurance that h^ would not destroy the 
Constitution. But he believed that he had found a roundabout 
way to accomplish his plan and even to give it the appearance 
of constitutional sanction, for Article 14 of the Charter declared 
that "the king should have the right to proclaim any arrange- 
ments and -ordinances v/hich might be necessary for the execu- 
tion of the laws and for the safety of the State." As it vvas 
impossible for the ministry to secure the co-operation of the 
Parliament, the king affected to be persuaded that such a (a?e 
of necessity as that contemplated by this article was at hand. 



104 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

(Of course the obvious remedy v/as for the ministry to resign 
and let a ministry take ofiice that was in sympathy with the 
Parliament and could command a m.ajority therein). The king 
now published the "five ordinances" which brouf^ht about the 
"Tuly Revolution." Three of them purposed the immiediate 
restoration of a subservient representation; four arranged for 
the dissolution of the newly chosen Parliament, Vv^hich had 
never yet assembled ; live announced a new election law, which 
disfranchised vast multitudes, and allowed the right to vote 
only to the great taxpaj^ers.. The only privilege left the dis- 
franchised was the right to prepare a list of candidates. A Par- 
liament chosen according to this law was to be called for the 
28th of Septem.ber. A fourth ordinance re-introduced the cen- 
sor and forbade the appearance of the newspapers except by 
police permission, and a fifth named various new members of 
the States council. These measures were prepared in deep 
secrecy. On the day they were to appear the king, with the ap- 
pearance of the greatest composure, went hunting and did not 
return to St. Cloud until midnight, but his behavior in the 
Council with his ministers on the 25th of July had demonstrated 
that he realized the situation was serious. It was the day he 
was to put his signature to the ordinances; then, with his head 
resting on his left hand, and holding the pen in his right, he 
had hesitated a moment and then signed and took his leave of 
his ministers with these words: "Gentlemen, you can count 
on me as I count on j^ou, between us the matter is now one of 
life and death." In the night the editor of the "Moniteur" 
v/as sent for by the Minister of Justice and received from him 
the ordinances, together with the command to print them at 
once. "May God preserve the king and France," he called out 
as he read them. "I have seen all the battle days of the revolu- 
tion and go forth with a deep horror of the new comimotions." 



N. B. — Part III. will contain the French July Revolution 
and the European revolutions of 1830 in Pelgium., Poland, 
Germany, etc. 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE JULY REVOLUTION. 

In spite of all forbodfngs Paris remained quiet all the 
26th of July. The deputies who were present met but did 
not formulate any measures. There were a few scenes in the 
cafes and some young people broke in the windows of Polignac's 
residence, but there were as yet no symptoms of a real revolu- 
tion. The signal for revolution was given in the editorial room 
of the National Forty-four journalists from eleven papers 
were gathered there to consult as to whether they would sub- 
mit to the unlawful restrictions on the press. They unanimously 
decided not to submit, but to publish a protest which was drawn 
up by Thiers, as follows : "As the rule of law has been broken 
and the rule of force has begun, obedience is no longer a duty." 
Only two papers, the National and the Temps, had the courage 
to publish this, but two were sufficient. The excitement of the 
people increased from hour to hour. Thousands of copies of 
these two papers were sold and read on the street corners. The 
news that the signers of the protest had been arrested and that 
the offices of the two papers were closed by the police increased 
the bitter feeling. About noon it was reported that Marmont 
(the tool of the king) had taken command of the army. Gend- 
armes were soon coming through the streets. They were struck 
occasionally by stones, and feeble efforts were made by the 
crowds to build barricades. About three o'clock there were a 
few shots fired, which indicated that a real resistance was be- 
ginning. An energetic effort on the part of the troops could 
have nipped the revolution in the bud, but instead of the 18,000 
men which Polignac claimed to have ready for service, there 
were only 11,000 in Paris and these could not be trusted, be- 
cause they were in intimate touch with the populace. But the 
worst of all was that no preparations to use the troops had been 
made. 

On the other hand, the whole day long the people had 
no leader, although the crowds in the streets increased from 
hour to hour. The dismissed workmen from the closed offices 



106 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

of the newspapers v/ere joined by students and the veterans of 
Napoleon. Barricades were finally built, windows were broken 
and lights extinguished and the guards were separated from 
each other, but the people did not know as yet what to do. In 
the evening Marmont, vi^ith incredible blindness, reported that 
the situation was not dangerous and that it was not necessarj' 
to declare the city in a state of seige. Night changed the situ- 
ation entirely. Under certain Radical deputies, such as Treil- 
hard and Merilhou, revolutionary committees v/ere established 
in the twelve districts of Paris. By sunrise the barricades had 
become very numerous. At dawn alarm bells were rung and 
thousands of people were brought out, who armed themselves 
from the plundered gun stores. Former national guardsmen 
appeared in uniform., the signs of court perveyors showing the 
royal arms were torn down and the cry becam-e louder and 
louder: "Down with the Bourbons!" 

Marmont recognized at last the increasing danger. As early as 
nine o'clock he reported to the king, "It is no longer a riot, it is 
a revolution," yet he advised the king not to trj"^ to put down the 
revolution with force, but to adopt measures to make peace with 
people. The king would not hear to this. The city was declared 
in a state of seige and Marmont was given unlimited power, 
but the marshal went to his task without hope of success. While 
he was sending the troops from the Tuileries to take possession 
of the Hotel de Ville and other important points he was also 
holding conferences with the Liberal deputies. These had met 
about midday, but only in small numbers, and passed a mild 
protest drawn by Guizot. (An action unimportant, for this 
is a revolution from the papers and not from the parliament.) 
Then five deputies headed by Lafitte and Casimer-Perier went 
to Marmont in the Tuileries to implore him to stop the fighting 
and to secure his influence with the king to that end. The 
m.arshal did not hesitate to say how much he disapproved of 
the coup d'etat, but said that his honor as a soldier required 
him to keep up the fighting and that there was no hope that the 
king would give v/ay. This was confirmed by Polignac's con- 
duct. Re was also in the Tuileries, hiit when Marmont sug- 



THE JULY REVOLUTION. 107 

gestecl to him to receive the deputies he refused, saying it was 
useless. At the same time the marshal reported to the king 
that the military situation was very serious, as the troops could 
not gain a foothold anj'where and advised repeatedly that the 
proposals of the Liberals be accepted, but Charles remained 
stubborn. Because the parliamentary opposition sought concili- 
ation v/ith the king he thought that it was a sign of weakness 
and did not see the real source of the revolution. Polignac's re- 
ports strengthened him in this insanity. 

The situation in Paris grew worse. The troops which Mar- 
mont had sent out all had to return to the Tuileries before 
evening, except a detachment in the Hotel de Ville that held 
their ground until darkness came, but escaped during the night. 

On the morning of the 28th of July Marmont was blockaded 
in the Tuileries. Only in the rear did he have an open way 
through the Champs Elysees to St. Cloud. What was worse still, 
the loyalty of the troops began to vacillate. He now made a 
speech in which he oiTered the Parisians a truce. It was not ac- 
cepted, but as a matter of fact the fighting did stop as the people 
were trying to win over the soldiers by flattering proposals. Two 
regiments of the line which were at the Place de Vendome yield- 
ed to the temptation and placed themxselves under the command 
of General Gerard, one of the Liberal deputies. Vendome sent 
one of the two Swiss battalions which defended the Louvre, to 
take their place. This made the other battalion lose courage and 
it left the Louvre and withdrew to the Place de Carrousselle be- 
tween the Louvre and the Tuileries. The people followed and 
opened a strong fire from the windows on the square. 

The troops were soon panic stricken and a disgraceful fight be- 
gan. Marmont himself had to leave the Tuileries, upon which 
the tri-color soon floated, and hasten to St. Cloud satisfied with 
being able to change the wild flight into an orderly retreat. He 
found the King in consultation with the cabinet. Polignac 
had arrived early in the morning to strengthen the king in his 
obstinacy for the bad news might have weakened him. But 
before his arrival the Counts Simonville and Argout, sent by 
?vIarrr;ont, obtained audience to recommend the dismissal of the 



108 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

ministry. The king remained firm in his conviction that to 
give waj' v/as to abdicate. Baron VitrcUe had not much better 
success when he reported the bad state of affairs in Paris and 
demanded a ministry composed of Mortmart, Casimer-Perier 
and Gerard as the only possible salvation. At last Marmont 
himself appeared as the messenger of his own defeat surrounded 
by dust-covered and perspiring adjutants. He most strongly 
supported Vitrolle's proposition for a Liberal ministry, but no 
conclusion could be reached in the cabinet. Late in the after- 
noon the king accepted the resignation of Polignac and called 
upon Mortmart, a moderate Liberal, to form a new cabinet. 
Vitrolle and others hastened with this glad news to Paris, be- 
lieving that all obstacles to an understanding were removed. 

They soon saw how badly they were mistaken. The desertion 
of the two infantry regiments had given the Liberal deputies 
courage. Twenty-five strong they sided with the newspapers 
and offered the command of the reorganized national guard to 
old Lafayette. General Gerard voluntarily subordinated him- 
self and assumed command of the troops of the line which had 
gone over to the revolvition. A council was organized, consist- 
ing of Lafayette, Perier, and General Lobau with three other 
deputies, and opened its sessions in the Hotel de Ville. It was 
to these that Vitrolle and his companions brought the news of 
tlie conciliatory measures of the king. Perier told them to go to 
the deputies who were still in session in Lafitte's house. The 
spirit of conciliation was strong here, but some of the individual 
niembers led by Thiers and Lafitte declared that nothing would 
help matters except a change of rulers. Their candidate for the 
throne was Louis Phillippe, Duke of Orleans, to whom. Lafitte 
had already reported that he had to choose between a crown and 
a passport. But although the duke was beloved on account of his 
alleged liberal principles, the outlook did not seem to be very 
bright for him at this time. His elevation to the throne was 
considered seriously by only a very few. 

So far, most people saw only two possibilities: to retain the 
Bourbons or proclaim the Republic. The first thing was to bring 
Orleans before the public as a possibility. This was brou.giit 



THE JULY REVOLUTION. 109 

about by means of large posters which Thiers had printed in the 
office of the National during the night and put up on all street 
corners on the morning of July 30th. The effect of this was re- 
markably successful, especially as the Duke of Mortmart, whose 
arrival in Paris had been anxiously expected until twelve o'clock 
at night, did not make his appearance, and so every securitj' for 
the conciliatory measure of Charles disappeared. Thiers in the 
meantime had gone to the house of the painter, Ary Schel¥er, 
in Neuilly, where he expected to find Louis Phillippe. He did 
not find him there, for the duke, to avoid being forced to any 
over-hasty steps, had withdrawn to Raincy, a lonely country 
house in the forest of Eondy, but he found the duke's sister, 
Madame Adelaide, a strong and ambitious woman whose sole 
purpose was to gain the crown for her brother and she promised 
to use her influence with Louis Phillippe. Thiers then returned 
to Paris and went to the Palais Bourbon, where the messengers 
of Mortmart had arrived. His news ripened the purpose to 
make Orleans king. As no further proposals or news came 
from Charles X, the Duke of Orleans was made stadtholder of 
the kingdom and a deputation was chosen to inform the peers 
of this action to gain their support and together with them to go 
to the duke and request him to assumiC his new office at once. 

At the House of Peers they found the Duke of Mortmart, who 
was armed with royal decrees which withdrew the offensive 
ordinances and re-established the national guard, but who had 
returned to Paris late, ill, tired, and utterly discouraged at the 
state of affairs in the capital and now gave his consent to the 
proposals of the deputies. As no one knew v/here Louis Phil- 
lippe was the news of his elevation was sent to his palace and 
his early advent to Paris requested. After a hard fight with 
himself the cautious duke decided to accept the oiKce and shortly 
before midnight entered the Palais Roj'-ale. Pie immediately 
sent for Mortmart and said that he had come to Paris only in 
obedience to the pressure of circumstances and only to prevent 
the proclamation of the republic, but that he would let himself 
be cut into pieces before he would put the crown on his head. 
Ke made similar announcement to the deputies who visited him 



110 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

on the morning of July 31, but in weaker form, and then issued 
a proclamation in which he accepted the office of stadtholder, 
recognized the tri-color as the flag of France, announced an 
immediate session of the Chamber of Deputies, and closed with 
the assurance that "the Constitution shall from this time on be a 
reality." 

The duke had recognized the source of the revolution and 
had cast in his lot with Thiers and the newspapers. The 
next thing was to win the approval of the previously organized 
revolutionary council and of the aged Lafayette. After the 
latter had been persuaded by Odillon Barrot to give up his 
hope of realizing his republican ideas, he consented to show 
the people by a pompous ceremony the unity between him and 
Louis Phillippe. Accompanied by ninety-one deputies the stadt- 
holder went to the Hotel de Ville. It \va.s a very dilapidated 
and anxious procession without military pomp except for one 
drummer. The only uniforms were those worn by a few adju- 
tants. It was a timorous cavalcade because it was feared that at 
any moment the bullet of a republican might take the life of the 
duke. Lafayette received Louis, surrounded by the members of 
the revolutionary council, at the door of the audience hall. 
After Orleans had agreed to the contents of an address, in 
which the ninety-one deputies guaranteed to the people a num- 
ber of liberal laws, Lafayette seized his arm and walked with 
him upon the balcony, holding the tri-cclor in his hand. 

A mighty demonstration of applause from: the people greeted 
color. The ice was broken and, recognized by the revolution, 
the duke returned to his palace. Soon after Lafayette formally 
returned his visit. This was also a success from the popular 
standpoint. The stadtholder agreed with the statem.ent of the 
aged patriot : "France needs a throne surrounded by republican 
institutions," and Lafayette was so pleased with the prince that 
he forgot to present to him the reform programmic which his re- 
publican colleagues had entrusted to him, that they might be 
officially ratified. As a result of this lapsus mentis of the flattered 
general a republican opposition to the new regent existed from- 
the first dav. Its leaders were Cavaienac and Ra^^tide. Thiers 



THE JULY REVOLUTION. Ill 

worked very hard to convert these also to the cause of the 
strictly limited monarchy. He arranged a personal meeting be- 
tween the duke and these men which, however, only served to 
reveal the great gap between them. When Bastide arose to 
leave, Louis called to him in a friendly way: "I hope you will 
come again." "Never," was the answer, but the duke comforted 
himself with his now famous saying, "one must never say 
'never.' " For the immediate future the displeasure of the ultra 
republicans had no great significance. Orleans had collected 
the reins of the revolution in his hand and was firmly seated 
astride it. Thiers had put the bit in its mouth, the deputies 
had furnished the saddle ?nd Lafayette and the national guard 
the spurs. It was now eary to ride wherever it could take him. 

The possible source of danger was not from the republicans, 
but from a counter revolution of the royalists, supported by 
the regular army and by the provinces. 

Charles X could still attempt an attack on Paris, especially if 
he could await the arrival of Bourraont's victorious African 
army. The stadtholder tried, therefore, to keep from breaking 
entirely with the king. But the feeble and hesitating, thoroughly 
Bourbon character of the king made him almost a contemptible 
opponent. After Mortmart's mission to Paris had failed, 
Charles X had cast himself again into the arms of Polignac. 
As his further stay in St. Cloud became dangerous, he told his 
ministers to look to their own safety and retired with his guard 
to Rambouillet, where he arrived late on the 31st of July. On 
the next day he v/rote a letter to the Duke of Orleans, whereby 
he transferred to him the regency. This acquiesced in, if it did 
not ratify, the revolution. Louis answered the letter in a defer- 
ential way, which satisfied the king completely, but the next day 
matters were greatly altered. Charles was convinced that for 
him personally there was no more hope and abdicated in favor 
of his grandson, the little Duke of Bordeaux, as Henry V. The 
abdication was ratified by his already aged and childless 
son, the Duke of Angouleme. 

This instrument from the king reached Orleans on August 2, 
and called on him to carry on the government in the name of 



112 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

Heniy V. It crossed on the way a message from the duke inviting 
the king to leave Rambouillet because of the excitement created 
there by his presence, but the king refused to receive the deputa- 
tion bearing the message. In order to get rid of the royal presence 
as a disturbing factor, stronger means had to be used. Without 
publishing the abdication, the duke ordered General Pajol on 
the 3rd of August to lead the national guard to Rambouillet. It 
vi^as intended to recall to the royal mind the march of the wo- ' 
man's mob and of the national guard on Versailles for Louis 
XVI. A motley crowd without soldierly array or discipline, some 
on foot, some in cabs, some on drays and wagons of all kinds. In 
all about 20,000 men, streamed out and took up camp before 
Rambouillet. Maison pointed out to the monarch in the most 
lurid colors the danger and assured him that resistance was im- 
possible, saying there were sixty thousand people camped before 
the palace. Charles feared the fate of his brother if taken to Paris 
and decided to leave that evening. In Maintenon on the 4th 
of August he determined to leave France finally and to give up 
a plan he had formed for establishing a rival government south 
of the Loire. The greater part of his body guard was dismissed 
and only about 1,200 men with two cannon accompanied the 
family to Cherbourg. The modest and quiet dignity of the 
procession as it went slowly from town to town took away the 
harshest sting of this measure as the last ruler of the house of 
Bourbon left France. Although the king and his escort suffered 
some few insults from the raw and rude mob they were not 
personally molested, and took an American ship to England, 
and landed on the Isle of Wight without receiving royal honors. 
Charles lived in England until 1832 in Dorsetshire and Edin- 
burgh, then moved to Austria, and died in Goertz on November 
6, 1836. His son Angouleme had preceded him in death in 

1834. 

The way in which the duke had brought about the departure 
of the king was neither laudable nor honorable. His later con- 
duct also bore in no sense the stamp of knightly courtesy. The 
fact that he did not try to bring about the succession of Henry 
V might be partly explained on the ground that he saw it to be 



THE JULY REVOLUTION. 113 

impossible. But he went a step further, in that he tried to force 
Henry V completely in the background and seclusion. It is 
true he owed his elevation to the revolution, but after he had 
accepted the regency he had voluntarily given the king assur- 
ances of his loyalty to him and his house. 

On the day of the march to Rambouillet the regent opened 
parliam.ent and informed it of the abdication of Charles and An- 
gouleme without mentioning that it was done in favor of the 
duke of Bordeaux. As to what was next to be done, he maintain- 
ed an impressive silence and allowed the chamber to take the in- 
itiative, knowing well what its course would be. On the motion 
of Gerard the chamber began at once to discuss the questions 
which related to the re-establishment of public order. On 
August 7, 1830, by a vote of 219 to 33 the throne was declared 
vacant, a number of changes in the constitution were made and 
finally, after an annojang and unflattering dilatoriness Louis 
Phillippe was declared "Kinj^^lMteJEkeucbJi' but not of France. 
The Chamber of Peers, which had been in no way conspicuous 
during the revolution, agreed to this measure. All of the 
members who had been created by Charles were discarded 
and a declaration made against a hereditary peerage. Only 
about one-fourth of their number took part in these proceedings, 
one-half resigned, and fifty-two refused the oath of allegiance to 
the new king. Chateaubriand alone dared to speak a word of 
allegiance in a public session for his deposed king now banished 
for the third and last time. On the 19th of August the King 
of the French swore allegiance to the declaration of the seventh 
of August, — a document which has been ridiculed as "the hap- 
hazard, tumbled together Constitution." Two days later the 
ministry was definitely formed, the Duke of Broglie took the 
Presidency, Mole, foreign affairs, while Lafitte, Perier, Guizot 
and almost all the leading men of the Orleans party were in 
this ministry. The personality of the new king was put into 
the background by the brilliancy and fame of his advisers. 

Louis Phillippe was already in his fifty-seventh year and the 
ripe experience of these many years was enriched by the memor- 
ies of his years of banishment. The laziness of his somewhat 



114 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

slow mind had been not unsuccessfully combated by the fam.ous 
Madame de Genlis, according to Rousseau's principles. 

On the other hand, under her tutorship was developed the 
tendency to secretiveness and ambiguity, inheritances which the 
boy received from his father, Philip Egalite, the notorious roue 
and revolutionary. The first years of the great revolution 
strengthened this tendency. The son, like his father, coquetted 
with the Jacobins. He was a m.ember of the Parisian clubs and 
a faithful attendant at the party meetings concerning which he 
kept a diary. After the outbreak of the war he took part in 
the cannonade of Valmy and the battle of Jemappes, but more 
splenetic than his father and less bound than he, he realized 
more and more fully how unnatural his position was for a 
prince of the royal house. The thought of emigrating to 
America was even then seriously considered. After the execu- 
tion of the king a more important role seemed to open to him 
through du Mouriez's plans, but the failure of these made his 
stay in France impossible. He escaped to Switzerland, while 
his father went to the scaffold. Shrev/dness or an unwarlike 
spirit kept him from going into the Austrian army to invade 
France, a fact which was of great use to him in 18.30. Taking 
the name of Chabaud la Tour he became a teacher of Geography 
and Mathematics at Reichenau in Graubuenden. When his 
incognito was discovered he traveled in Europe as far as the 
North Cape and also in Am.erica, even to the forests on the 
frontier, but always kept up political connections with a part of 
the emigrants, who looked upon him as the most suitable candi- 
date for the French throne. Not until his return to Europe in 
the beginning of 1800, when he found Napoleon first consul 
and du Mouriez in the camp of the Bourbons did he connect 
himself with the royal house. He received as reward for this a 
pension of fifty thousand francs from. England, on which he 
lived in Castle Twickenham, near London. His marriage with 
the Princess Amalie of Naples in the year 1809 caused him to 
think of conquering Murat's kingdom, but he also had designs 
upon Spain and he would have if necessary contented himself 
with the Ionic Islands without, however, ever giving up hope 



THE JULY REVOLUTION. 115 

of ascending the French throne. 

Infiuential politicians like du Mouriez, Talleyrand, and Con- 
stant, worked for him after Napoleon's fall, but to no effect, ex- 
cept to arouse the suspicions of the Bourbons, — suspicions which 
were strengthened hy Louis Phillippe's demand at the beginning 
of the hundred days that he be made regent in order to expel 
Napoleon. During the entire period of the restoration the duke 
had connections with the independent Liberals. In the Palias 
Royale such men as Constant, Lafitte, Perier, Horace Vernet, 
Thiers, and Mignet received a cordial welcome and were slowly 
form.ed into an Orleans party. In order not to let himself be 
forgotten as a candidate for the throne, Louis was not ashamed 
to use very questionable means. For instance, the London Morn- 
ing Chronicle published an article without signature after the 
birth of the duke of Bordeaux, which in the name of Louis 
Phillippe protested that the child was a changeling. (The same 
accusation has often been made by disappointed heirs apparent. 
This charge was made concerning James II's child, Charles Ed- 
ward and against the present Czarevitch). Louis Phillippe 
orally denied responsibility for the article, but made no written 
denial. In this matter, as in evcr5'thing else, he never came 
forward personally and his closest friends v/ere only allowed to 
work for him through the tenth or twentieth hand. He never 
disclaimed his liberal ideas and never let an opportunity escape 
to demonstrate his friendliness to the Bourgeoisie. As king he 
kept up his promenades through the streets of Paris without 
escort and carrying the proverbial umbrella under his arm. By 
his modest and blameless private and family life he sought to 
em.phasize a contrast to the preceding stiffness and rigidity of 
the court and so win the hearts of the people. His sons were 
bi-Qught up in the College de France, which had never before 
had as student a scion of the ro5^al house, and they Vv^ere not re- 
moved when the paternal head was crowned. A strong family 
feeling grew up in the house of Orleans, not without bad re- 
sults in some directions, as the king's efforts to secure foreign 
crowns for his^ younger sens brought him into trouble in foreign 
politics, and the Vv'ay he sought to provide for the financial in- 



116 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

terests of his own familj^ injured him at home. Charles X had 
unreservedl}^ turned over his private estate to the royal domain. 
Louis Phillippe only did this with the reservation that the use 
of it should be allowed to his children. 

The fact that this estate was reckoned at a hundred million 
francs and that it was increased by a large inheritance at the 
death of the Duke of Bourbon caused the people to desire a 
reduction of the civil list (budget for household expenses of 
the king) and it was eventually reduced from twenty-five to 
twelve millions. The king's reputation suffered much from 
his penurious and avaricious spirit. The new royal family never 
gained the deep love of the people, and indeed why should it? 
The whole land Vv^ithout resistance and with wonderful unan- 
imity accepted the results of the revolution, but it was m.ore 
through excitement than from a feeling of loyalty to the person 
of the new king. The king's tactful manner toward the num- 
berless deputations which he received from the whole country 
in the first month of his reign for some time charmed and 
delighted the provincial mind, but this could not long be 
reckoned on and in Paris it did not outlast the moment. On 
the contrary, there soon arose occasion for dissatisfaction. Un- 
heard-of changes were made among the Bourbon ofiicials. Of 
the prefects and generals there were only ten left in office. 
To the victors were given the spoils. Vast numbers of minor 
prefects and lower officials were removed. To the humiliation 
of these and their families was added the disappointment of 
numberless office seekers m.ost of whom had come with the 
recommendation of Lafayette, who had in one and one-half days 
recommended seventy thousand applicants. The king's attitude 
toward the clergy was also unsatisfactory to the Catholics. 
Tiie removal of the bishops from the upper house and from the 
council of state, the repeal cf the sacrilege law, the prohibition 
of public religious processions and many small annoyances em- 
bittered the church. On the other hand, the necessary pruning 
and suppression of many excesses of the mob against the priests, 
processions, and symbols of the church embittered the enemies 
of religion. 



THE JULY REVOLUTIOK. 117 

The finances of the state were in a bad way on account of 
the disturbances in the collection of taxes. Business had suffered 
very much on account of the revolution and fears of foreign 
war hindered its recovery. One hundred and fifty thousand 
persons had left Paris within a few weeks. Thousands of hun- 
gry workmen increased the fear of new disturbances, the cry 
became louder and louder that king and chamber and cabinet 
were opposed to the spirit of the July days. The proleteriat 
felt that it had been tricked and the revolution thwarted. 
Even the praiseworthy firmaiess in resisting the demands ox 
the republicans to take revenge on Polignac and his colleagues 
was considered as being in a sense treason to the spirit of the 
revolution. As many of the former ministers as had not 
escaped across the border were prisoners in the Castle Vin- 
cennes. The people were thirsty for their blood. Oh October 
1 8, only the cold blooded determination of the brave com- 
mandant of Vincennes, Daumesnil, saved the life of the prison- 
ers. He informed the mob that he would blow up himself and the 
prisoners rather than surrender them. The scorn of the people 
was even greater when the chamber, in order to save the 
accused, abolished the death penalty for political offenses. 

The change in the ministry of the second of November 
whereby the doctrinaires were thrown out and the ultra re- 
publicans under Lafitte monopolized the cabinet helped only 
for the rfioment. Even numerous detachments of troops 
could not protect the high court of Paris in its sessions in its 
own place from interruption, insult, and threatening. The 
peers did not decide according to the wishes of the mob, but 
nevertheless on December 21 sentenced Charles' ministers to 
life-long imprisonment, loss of all titles, orders and honors, and 
for Polignac the additional sentence of prescribed civil death. 

Among the lower classes the lightness of the sentence was 
a hard blov/ at the king's popularity — they desired the play of 
the guillotine. The royal unpopularity was heightened by La- 
fayette's withdrawal in a pique, as commander of the national 
guard because the chamber had abolished the office of commander 
to take effect at his death. 



118 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

Some of the ultra radicals also left the ministry. None of 
these resignations were especially unpleasant to the king, least 
of all Lafayette's as he now had an opportunity of putting In 
operation a conservative policy, a course toward which his whole 
individuality leaned. His course was vital for his foreign 
policy, as everything there depended on his ability to bridle the 
revolution. 



CHAPTER X. 



THE REVOLUTION IN BELGIUM. 



The July monarch}^ was quickl}'' recognized by the leading 
sovereigns in Europe, although Metternich bitterly complained 
that the old Europe had come to an end and that until the new 
commenced chaos was reigning. The czar Nicholas of Russia 
in addressing the new king refused him the customary title, 
"my brother," while the duke of Modena refused to recognize 
the usurper until Metternich forced him to do so. One reason 
that made the powers so complaisant was that they feared the 
foxes of revolution with their firebrand tails might be let loose 
in their own lands. The fear was not unfounded. Every 
French revolution leaves a lurid trail throughout all Europe. 
First of all, Belgium, without direct French interference, yet 
under the influence of the successful July Revolution rose against 
Holland. 

It will be remem.bered that in 1814 the Vienna Congress 
had united Holland 'and Belgium in the one Kingdom of the 
Netherlands (a roeasure intended by the other powers to pre- 
vent French aggression). But there had alwaj'S been between 
the tv/o a lack of unity that dated back to and beyond the days 
cf Phillip H, the duke of Alva and William the Silent of 
Orange. The repulsion between the two was based on relig- 
ious, economic, and ethnological grounds. 

Holland was Protestant, Belgium, Catholic. 

Holland was a com-mercial trading country, Belgium manu- 
facturing and agricultural. 

Holland was strictly Teutonic in race and culture, Belgium 
mixed Flemish and Walloonish, and strictly under the influ- 
ence of French culture and ideals. In addition to this, the polit- 
ical and governmental power of Holland was overwhelming. 
The attempt to use this preponderating power in religious dis- 
crimination inflamed the Belgium Catholics. Joseph 11. had 
attempted to break the influence of the priests and to put their 
education in the hands of the state. The state's burdens were 
vcv}- unequally divided 10 the disadvantage of Belgium. It 



120 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

was required to pay the great debt of two billion gulden, which 
Holland alone had accumulated, a burden so heavy that it 
necessitated taxes even on bread and meat. 

Although the population of Belgium was two-thirds that of 
the entire Netherlands, they were allowed only the same num- 
ber of representatives as Holland, and, at the pie counter and 
in the division of civil and military plums, they were almost 
entirely left out. In 1829 among the higher civil and military 
officers there were 317 Dutch and only 81 Belgians. The 
general discontent brought together strange bedfellows and 
Ultramontanism and Liberalism united in the southern country 
to fight for independence. 

The Dutch king refused to read the signs of the times and in 
a speech in Luttich in 1827, said it was an infamy to speak of 
complaints in the land. The answer was the building of a 
society in Flanders, which coined a medal with the inscription, 
"True even to infamy," in memory of the watchword of the 
old Waterbeggars, "true even to the beggars' sack." 

One of the early leaders was Louis de Potter, who, on account 
of his activity, had been banished and as an exile was in Paris 
during the July revolution. From there he wrote to King 
William, demanding an administrative separation of Belgium 
.and Holland. This was disregarded, as were all other indica- 
tions of the coming storm. These indications were numerous 
and plain enough. The revolutionists put great posters on the 
bill-boards as the king.'s birthday drew near, with the inscrip- 
tion, "Mondaj^, Fireworks; Tuesday, Illumination; Wednes- 
day, Revolution." On the 25th of August, the king's birthday, 
"Masaniello" was chosen as festival opera, although it cele- 
brated and glorified the insurrection of the Neapolitans against 
the Spanish domxination. During its presentation in the Brus- 
sels theatre there were vigorous outbreaks of political passion 
and the revolution changed its mutterings to a roar. All the 
next day the mob filled the streets and the government was 
powerless. On the 27th the reputable citizens took the lead. 
A committee was formed under the chairmanship of the Baron 
von Hoogvorst, the old banner of Brabant was fllung to the 



THE REVOLUTION IN BELGIUM. 121 

breeze, and complete separation from Holland was demanded. 
A division in the ranks of the revolutionists themselves now 
became apparent, which, but for the folly of Holland in failing 
to shov/ a conciliatory spirit might have side-tracked the revolu- 
tion. Potter's friends desired annexation to France, the Liberals 
wished a republic, and the Clericals desired an independent 
m.onaixhy. The Prince of Orange, wiser than his father and 
his people, visited Brussels and made an ineffectual attempt to 
reconcile the Belgians and gave a semi-premise that the two 
nations should henceforth be united only by personal union. 
But now there broke out in Holland a great rage against the 
revolutionists, and the determination was expressed to grant no 
concessions and to prevent the secession by force. The deter- 
mination was too late. In Belgium the insurrection made such 
rapid progress that only three fortified places, Antwerp, Maas- 
trich and the citadel of Ghent remained in the hands of the 
Dutch. On the 20th of September the citizens' committee of 
Brussels' gave way to a representative central committee, com- 
posed of Hcogvorst, Vandevej^er, Merode, and Louis de Potter, 
who had just returned from exile, together with prominent rep- 
resentatives of all insurrectionary parties. 

Prince Fiederick, the king's second son, now appeared before 
Brussels with an army of 10,000 men, and although he entered 
the city, was speedily forced to retire. On October 4th King 
William granted the "Personal Union," but it was too late. 
A_n election was ordered by the Belgians, and although a few 
republicans were elected, the vast majority Avere in favor of an 
independent constitutional monarchy, and on the 22nd of No- 
vember, it was so voted by a majority of 174 to 13, and the 
Plouse of Orange was expressly excluded from the throne. But 
although the House of Orange was thus by vote excluded from 
succession to the new throne, the question as to who was to fill 
it was one that the great powers would allow so small a nation 
as Belgium to decide for itself. The time chosen to effect a 
division was favorable. The eastern powers were concerned 
with Poland and in the west the great powers were not indis- 
posed to see the separation, France could not object, as it fol- 



122 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

lowed the example set by her, and England was not displeased, 
provided it was not used to increase the power of France. The 
aged Talleyrand, at that time French ambassador in London, 
and serving Louis Phillippe with the same aplomb that he had 
served his many predecessors, gave assurance that Louis Phil- 
lippe would not attempt to use the Belgian secession for his own 
benefit or for that of his house. A conference was called to 
meet in London to settle the double question as to the person 
of the new monarch and the part that Belgium should assume 
of the old national debt, as well as the vital boundary dispute. 
In the meantime the Dutch general, Chasse, commander of the 
Antwerp citadel, had damaged the cause he represented by a 
babarious bombardment of the city. 

On January 20, 1831, as the foundation of the separation, 
the London conference gave Holland the boundaries of 1790 
and all of Luxembourg, and declared Belgium a neutral power, 
but made her resonsible for 16-31 of the debt. This was accepted 
by Holland, but Belgium encouraged by France, refused to 
abide by the decision. The questions of debt and boundary 
were now suspended and forced to the background by the in- 
terest in the election of a king. The most prominent candidates 
after the exclusion of the Prince of Orange were Prince Leo- 
pold of Coburg, (who had made many enemies by his refusal to 
accept the crown of Greece) lukewarmly supported by England 
and bitterly opposed by France, Duke August von Leuchten- 
berg, a son of Eugene Beauharnais, and the step-grandson of 
Napoleon, and the Duke of Nemours, the second son of Louis 
Phillippe. The election of Leuchtenberg, who was for a time 
the most promising candidate and the real choice of Belgium, 
would have meant a revival of Napoleonic sentiment and so was 
earnestly opposed by Louis Phillipe, who announced that rather 
than permit it he would allow Nemours to accept the crown. 
This would be acceptable to Belgium, but would offend Eng- 
land. The result was that on the 3rd of February, 1831, 
Congress elected Nemours by a majority of two votes, although 
at the conference of the preceding day all princes of the great 
powers had been declared ineligible. Lord Palmerstcn promptly 



THE REVOLUTION IN BELGIUM. 123 

threatened war from England if he accepted and Louis was 
forced to say that he refused the honor for his son. 

The Belgian Congress now adopted a remarkably liberal con- 
stitution, one that in later years became almost as much a pat- 
ter as the Spanish Constitution of 1812 had been. England and 
France now united on Leopold from Coburg who was to marry 
Louise the daughter of Louis Phillippe. Lie promised to accept 
provided the boundary and debt decisions of the London Confer- 
ence were altered in favor of Belgium. On the fourth of June the 
Belgian congress elected him by a majority of 152 to 144 and 
on the 26th of June the Conference changed the Januaiy Proto- 
col to the eighteen articles which left the Luxembourg question 
open and gave to each nation the part of the debt that it had 
before the union and fairly divided the debt made since. To 
this Belgium agreed, and on July 21, Leopold entered Brussels 
and assumed the crov/n. Holland, hovv^ever, rejected the eigh- 
teen articles and invaded Belgium, v/ho appealed to England 
and France. England sent only a sea squadron, but France 
drove the Dutch back with an army of forty thousand men. 
This overwhelming French occupation of Belgium angered 
England as well as Holland and made Leopold very uneas}'', 
especially as he heard how Talleyrand, who had already de- 
manded Phillippeville and Marienburg for France, now sought 
to persuade Prussia and Holland to join France in dividing 
Belgium. His apprehension was increased when the French 
cabinet forced him to agree by a treaty of September 8, to raze 
five border fortresses between France and Belgium before Tra-.^e 
would withdraw its troops. This withdrawal of French troops 
was constantly urged by England. 

These events led to a third regulation of the boundary and 
debt question known as the Tvv^enty-four articles, which was far 
more unfavorable to Belgium than the eighteen had been, as jeal- 
ousy of the French caused England to lean to the side of 
Holland. According to this newest arrangement, Hol- 
land was given the greater (eastern) part of Luxembourg, 
and even a part of Limburg, while the new kingdom was 
to pay yearly more than eight million gulden as interest 



124 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

to Holland. Holland foolishly refused this award, which 
gave Belgium such an advantage that to the twenty-four 
articles was added a recognition of the new nation by the 
great powers. As Holland still persisted in hostilities the 
great powers decided to use forcible measures against her. 
They called it an "execution," carefully avoiding the expression 
war. The powers besieged Antwerp and drove the Dutch from 
the citadelle and took such other measures that Holland was 
driven in 1833 to a convention with the western powers, in 
which it declared itself ready to make peace with Belgium, a 
peace which was not formally consummated, however, until the 
treaty of 1839, entered into on the basis of the twenty-four 
articles, but with the eight million gulden yearly interest re- 
duced to five million. This treaty was even more important 
for Belgian interests than for Holland, because its material 
prosperity had suffered great wounds through the separation 
and a large market had been withdrawn from its trade by its 
exclusion from the colonies of the Netherlands and the con- 
sequent loss to its grain trade and manufactures. 

The king of Holland had cause to be discouraged and dis- 
satisfied with himself. Weary of ruling, he resigned the throne 
of Holland in 1840 in favor of the Prince of Orange, who as 
William H. ruled until 1849, and busied himself to cultivate 
constant friendly relations with Belgium. 

These boundary debt and throne succession questions are dis- 
cussed thus in detail to show how completely the wishes and 
interests of the great powers control the destinies of the smaller 
ones. It is another illustration of the law of the constellations. 
The jealousies of England and France and the jowl-licking 
greed of France and Prussia were the determining factors in 
the affairs of both Holland and Belgium. England alone pre- 
vented its being parcelled out like Poland, for as Lord Palmer- 
ston well observed, if the greedy powers once got a taste of 
blood they would not be content with just a bite. The whole 
story shows how the history of Europe is controlled and guided 
by the great powers. 



CHAPTER XI. 



THB POLISH REVOLUTION. 



Why was it that England and France alone of the great 
powers were the controlling factors in the destiny of Belgium, 
while Russia, Austria, and Prussia played so small a part? The 
answer is the "Revolution in Poland," that ran its course simul- 
taneously with the troubles in the Netherlands. Not alone the 
danger of a war with France kept the eastern powers back, but 
there wa". ever the possibility that, if they interfered in the 
Netherlands, Poland in insurrection, by France's aid, might 
become a threatening power. 

It was an unhappy day for Poland when Czar Nicholas suc- 
ceeded Alexander. Under Alexander Russian Poland was an 
Independent kingdom, united with Russia only through personal 
union. Army, finance, and administration were separate. More- 
over, Poland had a constitution which, although it left the over- 
weening power in the hands of the king, still made the legality 
of all lavv'S depend on the consent of the parliament which met 
for fourteen days once every tv/o 5^ears and consisted of a 
senate v^^hose thirty members were named for life terms by the 
king, and sixty representatives elected by the nobility and the 
communes. This parliament was rather a travesty on repre- 
sentative governmient, but it at least preserved the form of it and 
a law greatly gratifying to Polish pride required that all public 
offices must be filled by Poles as Russians were not eligible. 
The possession of such a constitution, the gift of the czar, 
could not overcome the natural and historical antipathy between 
Russians and Poles; an antipathy supported on the side of the 
Poles by a national pride nurtured by hundreds of years of 
Polish greatness and warlike achievement and the memory of a 
past proud independence; an antipathy still further strength- 
ened by the religious differences between the two countries; 
Russia being Greek Catholic and Poland rigidly, fanatically 
P.oman Catholic, and more utterly under priestly dominion 
than Ireland. 

No constituticn, however good, could have satisfied the Polish 



126 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

love for freedom that did not involve absolute national inde- 
pendence and restore the old boundaries. But the old boun- 
daries of Poland were in the possession of Prussia, Austria, and 
Russia, and hence any disturbance in this country demanded the 
prompt attention of those three pov^^ers. 

Yet with all this longing for independence, Poland was in no 
condition to achieve it. Social conditions were as rotten and 
social institutions as decayed as anywhere else in all Europe. 
The chief defect was the utter lack of a well-to-do national 
middle class. Trade and manufacture were mostly in the hands 
of the Jews, who were less patriotic and more deeply hated here 
than perhaps anywhere else in Europe. The peasants scarcely 
developed above the beasts of the field, were still held in the 
chains of complete and legal serfdom and knew no authority 
save that of the petty noble and the parish priest, and were glad 
to drown in cheap and fiery brandy all the sorrows of their 
uneventful lives. There were many am.ong the nobles of great 
name and property, but there was the old complaint of the 
needless multiplication of title and of the undue proportion of 
nobles, the great majority of whom were of moderate wealth 
and still more moderate culture, but they were all alike endowed 
with an ineradicable pride, a glowing patriotism, and a dare- 
devil braver}^ It was among this nobility that the seed ideas of 
the French revolution took firm root, although it scarcely oc- 
curred to them that the ideas of equality and freedom had any 
application to serfs and they were inclined to restrict them to 
the equality of the nobility among each other. This point of view 
was made easy by their former use of the Liberam Veto and the 
custom that gave to every child the title of its parents. Plow- 
ever, there was a really democratic party in the land composed 
of a minority of the nobility, of ofKcers, civil officials, and mer- 
chants. This party hoped to win the peasant class for the nation- 
al cause by abolishing serfdom. The leader of the Aristocrats 
v/as Adam Czartoryski ; and of the Democrats, Joachim Lelev/el. 
Kad it not been for the July Revolution the views of the Aris- 
tocrats would have dominated, but the influence of the success- 
ful July Revolution on the excitable Polish mind was to throw 



THE POLISH REVOLUTION. 127 

the weight of influence to the Democratic partj^ and hasten a 
revolution for which no adequate preparation had been made 
and for which the plans were not ripe. 

The cause of the im.moderate haste was the fear among the 
officers who constituted the corps of the revolutionary part}^ 
that the Polish army might be ordered against France. 

The first outbreak was the insurrection in Warsaw against 
the stadtholder or governor, the Grand Duke Constantin, who 
had refused the crown of Russia in order that he might remain 
in Poland with his Countess Grudsinka. He had ever since his 
marriage coquetted with the national Polish party and tried 
to represent himself as rather a Pole than a Prussian. In reality 
he secretly and after the most hateful fashions attempted to in- 
troduce Russian influences in Poland. He put in office count- 
less R-Ussians who made the pretense of becoming naturalized 
Poles, and filled the land with an army of spies and secret agents 
and with deeds of arbitrary cruelty perpetrated by himself and 
his favorites. This alien favoritism embittered the native no- 
bility who opposed him in the parliament. He answered by 
corrupting the elections and suppressing the freedom of 
the press. This course of arbitrariness he pursued with even a 
freer hand after the accession of Nicholas, for Alexander had 
loved the Polish constitution as his own creation, a feeling which 
was not only not shared by Nicholas, but was changed into op- 
position by the acquittal before the Polish parliament of several 
hundred conspirators led by Prince Jablonowski, charged with 
and unquestionably guilty of complicity in the Dekabristen 
conspiracy. The army of spies was perhaps justified by the fact 
that the land was honeycombed by secret societies, the breath of 
whose nostrils was conspiracy. Some of the conspirators were 
so daring that they had put notices on the gates of the pleasure 
castle of the Grand Duke's, "From January on to rent." 

On the 29th of November, 1830, Constantin was driven 
from Warsaw and the castle Belvidere, narrowly escaping with 
his life ; and the mob armed from the plundered arsenal took the 
city. Constantin took refuge in the village Wirtzba, where he 
remained inactive, being persuaded that the affair was only the 



128 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

rioting of an irresponsible mob, until the revolution had found a 
head, and a provisional government had been formed under the 
presidency of Adam Czartoryski vi^ith Lelewel next in power. 
Then as in every revolution began the long and bitter strife be- 
tween the various factions, sometimes one and sometimes the oth- 
er being in power until on January 25, 1831, the House of Ro- 
manoc was declared to have forfeited the Polish crown. Russia's 
answer was to send General Diebitsch Sabalkansky with an in- 
vading army of 118,000 men. The Poles opposed him at first 
with brilliancy and success, and at Waver and Dembe Wielski 
won brave and bloody victories. At Grochow (February 19, 
25) 1831) the Poles led by Skrzynecki with 45,000 men, long, 
bitterly, and victoriously resisted the 75,000 soldiers of Diebitsch, 
armed with twice as many cannon as the Poles possessed, but 
although the Russians were armed with twice as many cannon 
as the Poles possessed. The poles neglected to follow up their 
victories and were forced back upon Prague and at last they 
were fearfully and decisively defeated on May 26, 1831, at 
Ostrolenka, in spite of the brilliant feats of the command- 
ers of some of the smaller parties, and of the spread of the 
insurrection in Lithuania and Podolia. 

The brave, mad struggle of the Poles for independence won 
the sympathy of the peoples of all Europe and they were not 
without partisans even in the cabinets and among these was 
numbered, mir-abile dictu, Metternich of Austria. He had pro- 
claimed during the struggle strong neutrality and had otherwise 
sinned against his holy principles of hate to all revolutions. 
Perhaps it was the ancient antipathy between Russia and Aus- 
tria, perhaps he yet smarted over Russia's attitude in ending the 
Greek war and her action in regard to the Danube States; per- 
haps it was religious sympathy for the Roman Catholicism of 
the Poles as opposed to the Greek Catholicism of the Russians; 
perhaps he hoped for an annexation sought by Poland. Certain 
it is that he had by roundabout v/ays already sought the eleva- 
tion of the Archduke Karl of Austria to the future throne of 
Poland, but after Ostrolenka all such hopes had become idle 
dreams. France indeed sought to induce Palmerston to join 



THE POLISH REVOLUTION. 129 

in an intervention in favor of Poland, but, as Palmerston pointed 
out, they were not ready to back it up with a war and so refused. 
Every year from 1831 to 1848, the French Parliament in its ad- 
dress to Louis Phillippe's throne expressed its persuasion "that 
the Polish nation would not be allowed to go under." Of course 
after t'le first time these were idle words. Individual Prus- 
sians also saw with regret the dov/nfall of Poland, but the Prus- 
sian government pursuing its cold-blooded policy of following 
petty interest politics v/as sharply and aggressively against the 
Poles. "An independent Poland," it was said in Berlin, "could 
be for Prussia only a danger." Hungary was Poland's most en- 
thusiastic friend and begged the Austrian Kaiser to allow them 
to send armed assistance. A hundred thousand men stood ready 
to march to her assistance, but the Kaiser refused ignoring the 
m.em.ory of John Sobieski, and his rescue of Vienna from the 
Turks. 

But a higher power than any European cabinet stretched 
out for a short v/hile its awful hand and gave the Poles a 
brief respite. The cholera began for the first time its fearful 
march through Europe. A? early as 1830 it reached Moscow 
and in its train that army of moral diseases that accompanies 
every great plague; horror, despair, suspicion, superstition, m.ad- 
ness, lethargy, lawlessness, utter brutalization. It mocked at 
the bounds that attempted to confine it and overleaping all bar- 
riers set up by sanitation and quarantine boundaries paralyzed 
the art of the physicians and, as insatiable as the horse leech's 
daughter fed fat the m^aw of the grave. A few hours, and the 
sacrifice it had chosen was its prey; a few days and the corpses 
numbered hundreds, yea thousands. Riot and insane persecutions 
especially of the Jews accompanied it, for its origin was ascribed 
to the alleged poisoning rf the springs and watercourses by the 
Jews. In St. Petersburg, Nicholas himself breasted the mad 
waves of the m.ob and with mighty voice commanded: "Sink 
to your knees and beg God, who alone can help, for deliverance." 
With the cruel lust of a bloodhound the dread disease followed 
the trail of the Russian army of invasion, and on the very battle- 
field outvied fire and sword in its deadly effects. It proved no 



130 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

respecter of persons and with the impartiality of retributive 
justice it struck down the mighty from their seats. Fourteen 
days after his victory, Diebitsch, the proud victor of Ostrolenka, 
was dead, one week later Constantine followed him to the 
grave. (His proud boast that the first cannon shot against Rus- 
sia meant the end of Poland was to be fulfilled, but the voice 
that had prophesied Poland's doom was first hushed in death.) 
Eight days after Constantine, the great Prussian Gneisenau, 
the commander of the Prussian observation corps, was number- 
ed with the dead, while the ranks of the invading army were deci- 
mated. 

In Poland and in Lithuania as in Russia, deeds of awful 
cruelty followed in the wake of the plague. Poland was a 
fruitful ground for the persecution of the Jews. In Lithuania 
the fires of rebellion and persecution blazed together, fed by the 
Amazonian countess, Emilie Plafer, and the peasant Mattuse- 
wicz, the latter a raw barbarian who impaled and flayed Rus- 
sians and Jews and buried others alive. The Polish General 
Geilgud sent there to fan the flames of insurrection, v/as falsely 
believed guilty of treachery and was murdered by the bullet of 
one of his own officers. His talented subordinate, Dembinski, 
made a brilliant march with four thousand men through the 
.Tiifi t of enemies back to Warsaw, but the revolution used the 
interval of grace given it by the cholera to destroy itself b}^ 
intf'^necine strife and continual rioting and the murder of thity 
political prisoners in Warsaw marked the beginning of the end. 
The traitor Krukowiezki made himself dictator and sent 34,000 
w : away from Warsaw in the moment when it must fight for 
'in life, for Paskiewitch, the victor of Kars and Eriwan, was 
leading the renewed Russian advance that slowly but relent- 
lessly coiled itself about the doomed city and at last by storm 
forced a surrender. Although m.any of the army escaped to 
Au.stria, the scattered forces left in the land were speedily 
forced over the boundaries of either Prussia or Austria and there 
disarmed. Happy were those who made their escape to foreign 
lands. 

The fate of tlie conquered land was hard. The czar granted a 



THE POLISH REVOLUTION. 131 

pardon, but with countless exceptions that made it ahiiost 
meaningless. 

The leaders of the insurrection escaped for the most part to 
foreign lands, where they have since formed, especially in 
France, the kernel of a European revolutionary party. Their 
possessions were confiscated. The Czartoryski family lost there- 
by thirty million Polish gulden. Those who failed to escape 
were banished to Siberia or when they, like Krukowiezki, had 
atoned for their primary disloyality by an ultim.ate treachery, to 
the interior of Russia. 

The constitution of 1815 was abolished and in its stead the 
"Organic Statute" of February 26, 1832, established the ad- 
ministrative forms of the em.pire. 

Paskiewitch, the new Prince of Warsaw, became civil and 
military governor of the land and conducted a sleepless police 
regim.e v/hich succeeded for a long time in stifling the fire of 
patriotic enthusiasm ere it could burst into flame, but under the 
ashes it still glowed and drew ceaseless sustenance from the ever 
narrower alliance which the national tendencies made with 
religious hate against the Greek Catholicism of the Russians. 



CHAPTER XII. 



REVOLUTIONS IN SWITZERLAND^ ITALY^ AND GERMANY 



It must not be supposed that the July Revolution stopped in 
its influence with Belgium and Poland. France is the intel- 
lectual and political mother of the Continent. It has been the 
first to develop and the first to slough ofi an absolute monarchy. 
The constitutional monarchies of Europe are after French and 
not after English pattern and the republics and revolutions of 
the Continent find their model and forerunner in the same 
great state. Whatever political disturbance occurs in France 
reverberates with a hundred echoes throughout Europe. (At 
the present time, ( 1905) it is still leading the van in its strenuous 
efforts to shed and discard the worn-out institution of a state 
church). In Switzerland in 18 14-18 15 the old narrow-minded 
and spiritless patrician regim_e had been restored under the semi- 
protectorate of A^ustria. With difficulty the Cantons had been 
able to preserve their old privilege of making Switzerland a 
land of refuge for all the politically persecuted. But nov/ al- 
most v/ithout difHculty and in less than a year's tim.e almost 
every Canton in Switzerland, (Freiburg, Lucerne, Zurich, Solo- 
thurn, St. Gall, Thurgau, Aargau, "Waadt, Schaffhausen, and 
at last the greatest of all, Bern), established constitutions 
modeled according to dem.ocratic principles. Everywhere 
were extensive reforms, expansion of the privileges and 
rights of the great councils, or parliaments, and refor- 
m.ation of the franchise in the direction of manhood suffrage, 
but the individual sovereignty of the Cantons v/as not changed 
and there was not yet a strong centralization of government. It 
must not be supposed that the old ideas were without champions. 
Basel was separated from its outlying districts and each section 
was constituted a half Canton, thus increasing the number of 
Cantons from twenty-two to twenty-three. 

In 18.33 aJ^d even in 1832 the division was still so bitter that 
appeal was made to the sv/ord, but everywhere the liberal party 
triumphed. The antipathy between the tv/o parties remained, 
however, and the chasm v/as so vv'idcned by religious diiierences 



REVOLUTIONS IN SWITZERLAND, ITALY AND GERMANY. 133 

that the liberal victory was in so far indecisive that in the next 
decade an appeal to weapons must again be made and after a 
bloodier and more fundamental fashion than before. 

In Italy affairs had not improved since the revolution of 
1 82 1. The oppressions and follies of papal misrule had con- 
tinued as did the strife of the Sanfedisti and Corbonari. Under 
Leo XII the Sanfedisti were left free to vent their rage at will 
on their opponents. Leo's successor, Pius VIII, and King Fran- 
cis I of Naples died in November, 1830. These deaths en- 
couraged the Carbonari to insurrection, although its members 
were without clear and definite aims or a recognized central 
authority. The striking characteristic of this insurrection was 
that all looked for help from some one of Napoleonic blood. 
Some desired Napoleon II, who as the young Duke of Reich- 
stadt, just budding into manhood, lived in Vienna under the eye 
of Metternich. Rostand's "L'Aiglon," as played by Sarah Bern- 
hardt, gives a vivid picture of this period.) Some desired the 
young Jerom^e Napoleon, while still ethers cast their eyes upon 
the oldest son of the former king of Holland, Louis Napoleon 
(afterwards Napoleon III of France). They seemed to fail to 
see that this Nopoleonic inclination robbed them of the favor of 
Louis Phillippe, who was clever enough to see that his strongest 
opponents were neither the legitimists or the republicans, but 
the Bonapartists, and without Louis Phillippe's aid the Italian 
revolution must fail. 

On February, 4, 1831, a futile insurrection under Menotti 
broke out in Modena. It failed of support there, but kindled 
the flames of insurrection in the neighboring Bologna, where 
the coat of arms of the pope was torn down and his sovereignty 
declared to be a thing of the past. A provisional govern- 
ment was established prim.arily under the leadership of a 
stepson of Murat's. Count Pepoli, the Duke of Modena, who 
had conquered the insurrection in his own land, alarmed at 
events in Bologna now fled to Austria, while Marie Louise, the 
widow of Napoleon, fled fram Parma to Piacenza. Such a 
state of affairs could not by any possibility be observed v.'ith 
coriiplacencv bv Metternich. He caused it to be asked in Paris: 



134 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

"What would be the attitude of France toward Austrian inter- 
vention in Italy?" The answer was decisive and menacing: 
"Occupation of Modena would be permitted, Austrian occupa- 
tion of the Papal States would make war probable, occupation 
of Sardinia would make it inevitable." 

At the same time France made a vain attempt to establish a 
nev/ Rhine Confederacy. Metternich determined to risk war 
and startled Louis Phillippe by announcing that he, Metternich, 
"was not angel enough in case of necessity not to fire from all 
batteries," a threat that meant in an extremity the Duke of 
Reichstadt, Napoleon II, v/ould be produced from his Austrian 
obscurity as a candidate for the French throne. The threat was 
enough, especially as the Citizen King knew the Napoleonic 
tendency of the Italians. Louis did not dare interfere while 
Austrian troops occupied Modena, Parma, and Bologna, and 
without difnculty and almost without bloodshed quenched the 
insurrections. Louis Napoleon, who, together with his elder 
brother, Napoleon Louis, had taken active part in the insurrec- 
tion, escaped with difficulty. (Napoleon Louis had died on 
February 7 in Forli. ) Louis Napoleon and his mother Hor- 
tense were in Ancona when it surrendered to the Austrians; 
disguised in the clothing of a servant, he escaped with 
his mother to Switzerland. After the suppression of the 
revolution France demanded the v/ithdrawal of the Austrian 
troops under threat of French occupation of a part of the Papal 
States if it was delayed. The Austrians sullenly withdrew, but 
returned in 1832, the next year, on account of new disturbances 
in Rome. In obedience to the appeal of the pope the French 
immediately occupied Ancona, where they remained until the 
Austrian troops again and finally withdrew. The pope had 
meanwhile provided himself with 4,200 Swiss mercenaries as a 
personal guard. Metternich vainly tried to unite the Italian 
governments into a confederation similar to the German Bund, 
but they refused, and in fact France would not have permitted 
it. Italian national unity seemed further of? than ever. Closer 
relations were nevertheless being formed by marriage. Ferdi- 
nand II of Naples married in 1832 a Sardinian princess and in 



REVOLUTIONS IN SWITZERLAND, ITALY AND GERMANY. 135 

1833 married his sister to Leopold of Tuscanj^ Meantime, after 
the death of Karl Felix in 1831, Karl Albert of Savoy Carignan, 
the one time regent and former member of the Carbonari, had • 
mounted the Sardinian throne. Italy was nevertheless still a 
long w^ay from national union and two series of revolutions 
must sweep her unhappy provinces ere the time should be ripe, 
and the constellations favorable for successful revolt from Aus- 
trian domination and the renaissance of national independence. 

Let us turn from unhappy and distressed Italy to trace the 
trail of the July Revolution in Germany. 

Nearly all of the smallei German states, especially those in 
Westphalia, felt more or less distinct vibrations of the July 
Revolution. 

In Brunswick the young Duke Karl had in 1823 assumed 
the unhampered government of his province at the age of 
eighteen. Previous to this time he had been under the guardian- 
ship of George IV of England, who, on account of the thor- 
oughly bad and unreliable character of the young prince, retained 
t'le guardianship for a year longer than was customary. The 
result was much bitterness on Karl's part and finally in 1827 
he declared the last year of his guardianship as illegal and all 
laws passed during that period were null and void. The im- 
mediate occasion was the added bitterness caused by the fact 
that a noted diplomat of euphonious nam.e, Schmidt Phiseldeck, 
had exchanged his sei-vice for that of the king of Hanover. 
Not content with vitiating the legislation and official acts of an 
entire jear, Karl was guilty of all sorts of arbitrary measures 
against his own land, such as the illegal increase of taxes, the 
sale of t)ie public domain as private property, the limitless issue 
of paper money, the destruction of the financial basis of govern- 
m.ent and all sorts of meddling with private affairs. From all 
side:, complaints were m.ade against him to the Bundestag. 
While on his travels he happened to be in Paris in July and 
was an eye witness to the revolution there. He hastened home, 
thoroughly alarmed, to kill in the egg any revolutionary ten- 
dencies there, and vv^as greeted with a storm of complaints. He 
answered these by doubling his guards and planting cannon 



136 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

before the barracks. Angered by this display of force, the peo- 
ple rose against him, burnt the castle and drove him into exile, 
exalting his brother William to the dukedom in his place. The 
exchange of rulers meant little for the Liberals. The local 
Estates on the I2th of October, 1832, somewhat extended the 
very moderate rights and privileges which had been in 1820 
permitted to the population. 

The storm broke in Cassel on the same day that it did in 
Brunswick, September 7, 1830. William II since 1821 Kuer- 
fuerst (Elector) trod faithfully in the footsteps of his father and 
the hereditary covetousness and despotism were undiminished, nor 
would he hear to a separation of the property of the state from 
that belonging to himself. To his mind the state budget and 
his private purse were identical. To cane high-born servants of 
the state with his Spanish walking stick or to stab his adjutants 
with his sword seemed to his royal mind allowable escape- 
valves for his ferm.enting sovereignty. Ke had separated him- 
self from his wife, a sister of the king of Prussia, and lived a 
life of such open and excessive shame with his mistress, Emilie 
Ortloepp (a common born Berlin woman raised by Metternich 
to the rank of Grgefin von Reichenbach) that he became unbear- 
able even to the royalty-loving Teutonic mind and an insur- 
rection based on personal grounds as in Brunswick was raised 
against him on the charge that he had conspired with the 
bakers to raise the price of bread. 

Any excuse was good enough to get rid of such a sovereign. 
By the 15th of September William II was obliged to call in the 
Estates and to send away his m.istress out of the land. The 
Estates under the leadership of the beloved Liberal, Sylvester 
Jordan, a Marburg professor, promulgated a new constitution, 
which went into operation as the fundam.ental law cf the state 
on January 5, 1831. This constitution played a noted role 
thirty years later and claim.s pre-eminence over other German 
constitutions on account of the one chamxber system and the 
widely extended right of popular representation. 

The Elector now believed the public satisfied and recalled 
the Graefin, but v/as speedily obliged by popular indignation 



REVOLUTIONS IN SWITZERLAND, ITALY AND GERMANY. 137 

and uproar to exile her once more, and in order to be able to 
follow her and dwell where he pleased, for which he had the 
example of Constantin of Russia, and in which he was to be 
the example, he made his son the Prince-Elector, Friedrich 
Wilhelm co-regent. This prince has the distinction of being 
the last German Elector. He shares with his father and grand- 
father the doubtful honor of claiming the title after it became 
meaningless. 

The kingdom of Saxony also had its revolution, or shall we 
say riot, at this time and like that of Electoral Hesse, it closed 
with a new constitution and co-regentship. The causes here 
were somewhat different. Dissatisfaction with the ruling 
house was not the main element for with the exception that the 
Saxon royal family was Catholic and inclined to the Jesuits it 
v/as not unpopular. August the Strong had become a Catholic 
in order to obtain the crown of Poland, and the royal house has 
so far displayed the belated decency not to change back. How- 
ever, countless privileges of the nobility shifted the greater part 
of the taxes and burdens on the middle and lower classes, and 
industry was cramped by the narrowness of the markets. The 
im.portant Leipzig book trade (Leipzig is the center of the 
bookmaking world) on account of the pressure of the censor- 
ship could not flourish in its fullest bloom. In South Saxony 
the expanded privileges of the magistrates gave additional cause 
for complaint. The cumulative grievances caused rioting and in 
Leipzig and in Dresden the people won the upper hand and 
plundered the Rathouses and the police buildings. The de- 
mands of the revolutionists or rioters were freedom of the 
press, reform of the state and community constitutions and 
dismissal of the ministry and of the Jesuits. King Anton, al- 
ready an aged man when he succeeded his brother in 1827, see- 
ing his two chief cities in an uproar, made the desired conces- 
sions. His brother Maximilian, the successor to the throne, 
and also an old man, waived his right to the succession in favor 
of his son Frederick August, and this much loved prince was 
made co-regent. The new constitution was introduced on Sep- 
tember 4, 1831. The people greeted co-regent and constitution 



138 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

with rejoicing and all was again lovely in Saxony. The consti- 
tution remedied local grievances but does not mark the begin- 
ning of an era of liberalism, 

A like revolution in Altenburg resulted in obtaining a con- 
stitution, but a similar movement failed in Sondershausen as 
did the attempt made in Schleswig-Holstein to unite these two 
provinces under one constitution connected with Denmark only 
by personal union. 

In Hanover the land was under the regency of the Duke of 
Cambridge, acting for William IV, although the successor to 
the throne according to Salic law would not be Victoria, the 
daughter of William, as in England, but his next brother Ernst 
August, Duke of Cumberland. Under Cambridge's regentship 
an attempted revolution in Goettingin and Osterode in 1 831 
failed, but the same year Cambridge, raised to the rank of vice 
king, allowed Dahlmann and the Estates to prepare a constitu- 
tion that gave to the land a bicameral parliament representing 
the nobles and the land holders chiefly and modeled on an 
English constitution that meant some progress in constitutional 
government. On account of the reaction attending the sup- 
pression of the Polish revolution the introduction of the con- 
stitution was delayed and the constitution itself crippled. It 
went into force in this mutilated form on the 26th of Septem- 
ber, 1833. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



THE LIBEIL^L PROPAGANDA IN SOUTH GERMANY AND 
WHAT CAME OF IT. 



The great contrast between North and South Germany lay 
in the fact that North Germany prided herself on her patriotism 
in having led the movement that overthrew Napoleon and acted 
as if the North Germans had monopolized all the patriotism of 
the entire land. The North German and especially the Prus- 
sian is scarcely willing to allow to any one else even a share in 
his exploits. In the great mural painting of the battle of 
Waterloo, (the Germans call the fight Belle Alliance), in the 
celebrated Arsenal of Berlin there is not an Englishman in 
sight anywhere. If Wellington had been a subordinate or 
non-commissioned officer under Blucher the Germans could 
not give to the first less or the last more credit. The North 
Germ.ans deem that the long alliance of the South German^; 
and the Rhine States Vv^ith Napoleon deprive them of any credit 
for his final overthrew. On the other hand, the South Ger- 
mans saw in the attempt to give to the stiff, dead being of the 
north the lead in affairs of state the danger of seeing entire 
Germany turned into such a military and bureau-ridden State 
as Prussia itself, and in such a consummation the death of all 
liberal ideas, for they felt with justice that the fire of liberalism 
burned only on the hearthstone of South Germany and pre- 
ferred rather an alliance with the liberal ideas of France than 
absorption under the dead despotism of Prussia. They boasted 
their pure Teutonic blood as against the Slavic mixed strain of 
the Prussians. The South Germans were cosmopolitan citi- 
zens of the world and scarcely cherished a hope of a united 
national Germany. Yet on South German soil arose the first 
prophet of the "Small Germany" in the person of Paul Pfizer. 
In his "Correspondence of Two Germans" he boldly praises 
Prussia's government, laws, and ruling house and calls on her 
to assume the lead of all Germany, Austria excepted and ex- 
cluded, and finally in the exalted apostrophe of patriotic poetry 
calls on the Eagle of Frederick to cover with the broad sweep 
of his wings a united Germanv. But Pfizer was only the 



140 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

prophet, not even the forerunner of the United Germany. 

In South Germany, as a rule, the plans for empire where they 
existed at all, took a far different form. In Baden some stu- 
dent demonstrations had caused the re-introduction of the censor, 
and the constitution had also been tampered with by royal in- 
fluence. The result was the influential papers of Bavaria, the 
German Tribune, editor Wirth; and the Volksblatt, editor 
Eisenmann, followed by a host of less important sheets, earnest- 
ly proclaimed democratic and cosmopolitan goals. During the 
revolt in Poland they hoped to make Poland a dem.ocratic state, 
and then with its help to found a democratic German empire. 
The piebald painted boundary fences and even the German lan- 
guage was ridiculed by miany who hoped to unite the demo- 
cratic enipire so formed with a new combination of European 
States under the intellectual guardianship of republican ideal 
France. 

In January, 1832, there was formed in the Rhine Palatinate 
a 'Tress Verein" for the purpose of building a Confederacy 
that should by legal methods and moral sausion spread the 
coercion that a German Empire with a democratic constitution 
was necessary in order to combat the alliance which the princess 
had formed for the suppression of the peoples. Wirth was 
forbidden by the Bund to issue his paper and having disobeyed 
was tried and acquitted, thus heightening the excitement in all 
strata of society which at last found public expression in the 
Hambach festival — a demonstration of the same character but 
far greater in proportions, extent, numbers, and influence than 
the Wartburg festival, but like it lacking the elements of blood, 
iron, and power necessary to success. 

Proclamation of Seibenpfeiffer and several citizens of Neustadt 
on the Haardt invited men and youths, women and maidens, to 
celebrate on the 27th of May, 1832, the German May-day 
in the Castle of Plambach a 'Tatriotic Festival." Its purpose 
was to resist internal and external violence and to strive for 
the freedom and national honor of Germany. At first the Ba- 
varian government purposed to stop the festival by force, but 
it lost courage on account of the strong representation of the 



THE LIBERAL PROPAGANDA IN SOUTH GERMANY. 141 

provincial and municipal parlianaentary bodies of the Palatinate. 
The festival vi^as allowed to proceed and was celebrated by 
25,000, some say 60,000, participants. Although most of these 
came from the neighborhood yet remote districts were repre- 
sented. Many students took part some of whom believed firmly 
that the time had arrived for them to give up their lives for their 
fatherland, a sacrifice which they had come prepared to make. 
Poles and Frenchm^en were also on hand and in the parade the 
Polish flag fluttered by the side of the black-red and gold, and 
was surrounded by an escort of honor composed of women and 
maidens. Three hundred trades apprentices sang the opening 
song. In the passionate poetry of the occasion all despots were 
cursed and especially those who had inflicted the recent deed of 
shame on Poland. Neither were the addresses which were read 
at all mealy-mouthed, as the Germans say, "held no leaf before 
the mouth." Then the Prussians from the Rhine provinces 
complained that they, like a sprightly lark, must be shut in the 
cage with a sullen old owl. An old m.an from Lake Constance 
v.'arned the States against nibbling the bait of the ZoU Verein 
and advised them, to unite with the French in battling for a 
comnicn end. The Strassburg Society calling themselves "The 
People's Friends," and the Poles in Paris sent greetings and 
good wishes. Countless speeches gave expression to the thoughts 
of the day. Siebenpfeiffer gave as a toast: "Fatherland! Brother- 
hood of Nations! People's Sovereignty!" Wirth gave as a toast: 
"The United Free States of Germ.any and Federated Republi- 
can Europe!" Rey of Straussburg proposed "The Holy Alli- 
ance of the Nations." Others gave utterance to the sentiment 
that "the best Prince by the Grace of God is a born traitor to 
the human race." Others reviled the Prussians, sajang that they 
had "dried up in servile humility to royalty and that they had 
withered away in the grace of Princes." Others declared that 
every delay of revolution was cowardly treachery to reason, 
virtue, and humanity, and proclaimed a resort to arms as the 
most sacred and justifiable of all measures. More than once 
the speakers were interrupted by cries of "to arms!" "to arms!" 
and when Wirth finished his speech a sword was delivered to 



142 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

him with solemn ceremony, which he greeted as "a prophetic 
token." 

There were, to be sure, cautious and conservative souls who 
warned against any and every revolution, who demanded liberty 
and order, and who emphasized national honor and integrity as 
opposed to the prevalent cosmopolitan enthusiasm. Wirth, 
whose liberalism was not of the international type, spoke out 
boldly: "Liberty itself must not be bought at the cost of Ger- 
man territory and as soon as foreign interference should inter- 
vene the light against internal traitors must be interrupted and 
the entire people be called to arms against the foreign enemy." 
Such a demonstration would seem to the American mind to 
make revolution certain and immediate, but to the Germans it 
was merely a blowing off of steam. It had not the strength of 
either cosmopolitanism or nationalism or even confederacy. 
Several smaller meetings followed it and a confidential com- 
mittee was even appointed to attempt to form some plan of 
united action, but the whole thing was, on a last analysis, a mere 
empty and windy demonstration, but this did not prevent its 
being overtaken by reaction and retribution traveling on flying 
feet. It was a duel between Sultanisra and demagogery and 
Sultanism triumphed. The demonstration caused the experi- 
enced Metternich and his diplomats no real anxiety and they 
vrelcomed it in fact as giving them an opportunity to put out 

of the way those who, like the parrot, "talked too much." 

The king of Bavaria at once sent Field Marshal Wrede with 
troops to the Rhine Palatinate to keep the peace. The leaders 
in the demonstration were arrested (Wirth and Siebenpfeiffer) 
and the Bundestag unfolded its customary police activity. A 
Russian note decisively demanded from the German govern- 
m.ents that they take immediate measures for the suppression of 
the dangerous damagogues and demagogery. The Holy Alli- 
ance lived again after its long slumber and Metternich took up 
once more the campaign against Liberalism both by word and 
deed. On October 27, 183 1, the Bundestag forbade that it be 
further burdened with petitions. On November 10, it pro- 
tested zealously against the misuse of the press. The news- 



THE LIBERAL PROPAGANDA IN SOUTH GERMANY. 143 

papers were forcibly suppressed and the governments warned to 
greater activity against the democrats. The resolutions of the 
28th of June for which Austria and Prussia had in advance 
secured assent from the various governments were directed 
against the assemblies of the Estates. Their actions should be 
watched for the ne.xt six years by a "Federal Commission." 
Every resolution directed against the monarchical principle was 
to be declared void, a refusal to pay taxes would be punished 
with armed force, the publicity of transactions in the parlia- 
ment must be limited. The Bundestag alone could promulgate 
an act of the Bund. The internal legislation of the separate 
States was to be secondary to Federal issues. 

Eight days later, on July, all the political clubs, meetings, and 
festivals, together with public wearing of cockades, ribbons, and 
badges and the erection of standards and liberty trees were for- 
bidden. Foreigners as well as native citizens who were suspected 
of revolutionary opinions were to be taken under strict super- 
vision. The acts against the Universities of the years 1819 and 
1824 were renewed and the quickest military aid was promised 
by Austria and Prussia to all those States who needed it. Several 
vengeful strokes were also aimed at the press. German writ- 
ings printed in a foreign country could not be circulated with- 
out special permission and the press law of Baden, the pride of 
the Liberals, was declared void. 

An attempt of Lord Palmerston to interfere in the internal 
affairs of Germany in which he, in consideration of the resolu- 
tions of the 28th of June, begged the Greater Powers of Ger- 
many to restrain the over-zealous haste of the Bundestag, was 
very decisively thrust back. Ancillon (Prussian minister) re- 
fused to receive the note at all. Metternich answered It by dis- 
claiming the dangerous principles the note complained of. The 
Grand Duke of Baden, it is true, went so far against 
the Bundestag as to ask aid of Louis Phillippe. When this was 
refused and Austria began to threaten a partitioning of his 
province he yielded and altered on the 28th of July his press 
law to conform to the demands of the Bund. A num.ber of 
papers were suppressed and their editors were arrested or com- 



144 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

pelled to flee. The professors, Rotteck and Welcker, were re- 
tired from office. 

In Baden all of this was only at the direct command 
of the Bund but in the other States the governments showed 
great zeal and energy on their own account. Ludwig 
of Bavaria seemed to have forgotten all of his liberal 
ideas. In the most arbitrary way, men like Oken and 
Schoenlein were set aside and others like Behr and Eisenmann 
were detained for years in prison and others on a charge of 
high treason were condemned to prison and to begging for par- 
don and mercy from, the portrait of the king which was set up 
in all the courts. In Wuertemburg the Estates were dissolved 
because they had adopted a motion of Pfizer that the recom- 
mendation of the Bundestag be not accepted and had sent an 
address to the king to this effect. But in the new election the 
people were true to their representatives and these carried on 
the fight boldly. Uhland preferred to resign his professorship 
rather than his seat in parliament. Also in Electoral Hesse 
where Hassenpflug was at the helm and in Nassau the chambers 
miade such strong opposition to the government that it was neces- 
sary for the government to dissolve them. 

These stringent reactionary measures encouraged the break 
betv/een the radical and moderate elements in the liberal party. 
For a while the latter were made more cautious ; the former on 
the contrary were inflamed with great desire to put a final end 
to this state of affairs without considering whether they were 
strong enough to do this or not, and as the possibility of using 
legal methods and moral suasion was denied them they had 
recourse to secret societies and conspiracies and to union with the 
revolutionaries of other lands. The tried, sane, and conserva- 
tive leaders of the "opposition" in the Estates would not follow 
them in this, so the radical leaders, mostly men without great 
force and with an influence chiefly local, were deserted by the 
former liberal leaders and left to traverse more rapidly the way 
of destruction. Even in the Press Verein and at the Hombach 
festival the real leaders of liberalism like Rotteck, Vv'elcker, 
Itein, Mittemayer, Uhland, Roemer, Pfizer, Closen, and Jordan 



THE LIBERAL PROPAGANDA IN SOUTH GERMANY. 145 

were not vtvy active and they held themselves aloof from the 
niany subservient demonstrations and declarations v^^hich w^ere 
made against the Federal resolutions along the Rhine and the 
Main. An effort made by the radicals to bring them over again 
failed. Welcker declared in a speech at Frankfort in Autumn, 
1832, that he was strongly against secret clubs and would not 
hear to any but lawful means. Thus all ties were quickly 
broken and former friends were called servile, enemies of the 
real lovers of freedom, and v/ere accused of bowing the knee 
before power and instead of being for the regeneration of the 
people to have become sychophants to the princes. Their loyalty 
to their respective princes was termed "hound loyalty." All of 
which accusations despite their crassness and coarseness Sieben- 
pfeiffer did not hesitate to cast at Rotteck. 

Despite this division the names of the old leaders were still 
used to gain followers for the liberal and even revolutionary 
propaganda. The chief converts to the liberal cause nov/ cam.e 
from the peasants, the military, and the students. Especially 
am.ong the student societies was the enthusiasm great and these 
still cherished a hope of foreign intervention, an intervention 
not even considered by Palmerston or Louis Phillippe, the only 
sources from which it could come. 

As early as the summer of 1832 it was reported from Heidel- 
burg that from. 200 to 300 supporters of an uprising could be 
found and that twenty-five to thirty young men were ready on 
their own initiative to undertake any feat of daring. It was 
meant by this to use the weapon subsequently adopted by the 
Nihilists and inaugurate by regicide and assassination a reign 
of terror for the princes. It was thought there that six or seven 
dethronements would have a great moral influence, especially 
if three or four knives (guillotines) were set in motion by this. 
Both terror to royalty and martyrdom for the assassins v/ould 
be gained. Like views obtained in Erlangen, Muenchen, Tue- 
bingen, Kiel and Wuerzburg. Representatives cf these six 
universities held a student assembly (Burschentag) 1832, in 
Stuttgart on Christmas day and resolved to join the Frankfort- 
ers in vvinnins; Gerraanv's unitv and freedom by way of rcvclu- 



146 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

tion. Frankfort was chosen as the point of attack as it was the 
capital and the seat of the Federal Diet or Bundestag. These 
students were especially encouraged by the news that this plan 
had many supporters in the army, a' statemxent which was greatly 
exaggerated, for with the exception of a few non-commissioned 
officers in Hesse-Homburg, the propaganda had really been 
successful only in Wuertemburg. Here Lieutenant Coeseritz 
had won a number of officers and about 200 non-commissioned 
officers for a military insurrection. The support of the rank 
and file was regarded as certain. The plan of the revolution 
was already made out in all its details, they were to march from 
Ludwigsburg to Stuttgart, take the king captive, plunder and 
if necessary burn the city. At the same time the Frankforters 
were to arise, overpower the Bundestag and proclaim the Re- 
public. It was hoped that Dembinski (the great Polish general) 
would take part. A company of Poles was to march from 
Eesancon through Switzerland into Germany. Lafayette, it 
was said, had promised co-operation of the National Guard of 
Alsace. Sometimes the leaders had the feeling that their entire 
plan was a house built on sand, but by means of mutual encour- 
agement and exaggeration of their real strength they strength- 
ened their v/aning courage. In many conferences a date for the 
uprising was discussed and at last April i, 1833, was adopted. 
All Fools' day seems singularly appropriate for so foolhardy a 
task. About thirty Burschenshaften, a number of Poles and 
other foreign radicals had come to Frankfort to co-operate. 
Among the citizens were several Doctors, (of Philosophy) Bun- 
sen, Gaerth, Koerner, who were the soul of the undertaking. 
In the very last days the affair seemed to stagnate. Koeseritz 
sent word that he must wait, but Gaerth importuned him by 
special messengers not to delay, in fact in Frankfort everything 
had gone too far to permit of another delay. 

On the evening of the third of April fifty or sixty conspirators 
gathered in two different houses. The larger division was to 
storm the chief guard house and the smaller, the city jail. Both 
were successful alm.ost without efiort for although the entire con- 
spiracy had been betrayed that m.orning to the mayor of Frank- 



THE LIBERAL PROPAGANDA IN SOUTH GERMANY. 147 

fort no preparation for resistance had been made. The guards 
were in the building, their guns outside in the hall. The officer 
on dut5' in the chief guard-house escaped through the window, a 
few soldiers were killed or wounded, the prisoners were set free. 
Things passed off in like manner at the jail, but with this the 
success of the insurrection was at an end. The people could not 
be aroused to take part. In vain the bells clanged and stormed 
from the cathedral tower; in vain they awaited the arrival of 
the peasants from the surrounding country. An attack on the 
arsenal failed, and the leaders lost their heads. In the mean- 
time the militia of Frankfort was called out and marched 
against the guard house. As easily as they had lost it they re- 
gained it again, but this time several were killed or wounded 
on both sides. About thirty of the insurrectionists were arrested 
although all the leaders escaped. This practically ended the 
revolution. The mountain had labored and brought forth a 
ridiculous mouse. The whole affair bears in history- the name 
of the Frankfort farce. 

The Central Court of Inquiry appointed by the Bundestag 
m.et in Frankfort on June 29, and took up the customary police 
persecution and tedious long-drawn-out processes against all 
guilty and suspected persons, newspapers, and travelers, and 
continued its procedure until the dissolution of the court in the 
summer of 1842. It discovered that more than 1,800 persons 
had been engaged in the conspiracy, four hundred of whom had 
made themselves inaccessible by escaping to foreign lands. It 
vva^ the duty of the various State courts to try the culprits in- 
dicated by the Central Court of Inquiry. The Prussian Chan- 
cery Court (Kammer gericht) developed the greatest severity. 
Of the 204 students it condemned thirty-nine to death, but the 
king mitigated the sentences to life, or thirty years, imprison- 
mnent. In Bavaria some were condemned to death, but the sen- 
tence was not executed. The majority of the accused received 
only small sentences and many who were really deeply en- 
tangled in the affair came off rather lightly, partly because of 
the hum.anity of some of the judges and partly because many 
vi^-ere able to conceal their complicity in the affair. The de- 



148 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

moralizing influence of conspiracy revealed itself in perjury and 
bogus certificates, which many tried to defend as fundamentally 
justifiable in such cases. Those who escaped punishment were 
given ovations in many places, which showed the sentimental 
feelings of the times. They were received in carriages, flanked 
with outriders and drawn by four horses and escorted by guards 
of honor of white robed maidens, which passed under triumphal 
arches. The affair usually ended with festival balls and ban- 
quets. One result of the prolonged investigations was to in- 
creasingly embitter the people and to make the radicals more 
violent. This tendency was skillfully aided by the press, espe- 
cially in Frankfort and Hesse. Revolutionary songs such as 
"Pitch the princes over the border," "The head machines," etc., 
were sung, and short pamphlets, essays, and periodicals were 
written, the chief purpose of which was to stir up the peasants 
and artisans. 

The theme of these was that it seemed that God had created 
such lower classes on the fifth day and only aristocrats and 
princes on the sixth day, as If only to the latter he had said, 
"Have dominion over every flesh of the air and beast 
of the field," and as if he had reckoned the former 
among the reptiles and creeping things. By such effusions 
political radicalism gradually accomplished Its metamorphosis to 
Communism and Socialism. A whole year through reckoning 
from the Frankfort farce it held the ascendancy on the Main 
and Rhine and found a complete organization In the "Man- 
hood Club" which was evolved from the old Press Verein. The 
form of this was to divide the membership Into different groups, 
as was the case in foreign secret societies. Twelve members at 
the most formed one section, twelve sections formed a series and 
twelve series a Union. This form of organization rendered 
complete betrayal almost impossible. In Frankfort alone It is 
said one or even two hundred sections existed. An effort to 
set free those arrested at the time of the Frankfort fiasco re- 
vealed the existence of the club to the authorities In May, 1834., 
and gave the investigations enlarged scope and new material. It 
also gave the revolutionary plans the death stroke and from that 



THE LIBERAL PROPAGANDA IN SOUTH GERMANY. 149 

time on they only flourished among the fugitives in foreign 
countries. In Germany itself in the following years its members 
appeared only occasionally and only as individuals, isolated, 
and always as by-products of the secret societies in France and 
Switzerland. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS IN PRUSSIA, 



It required indeed the eye of a prophet to see the Prussia, of 
1830, and the two following decades, the saviour and unifier of 
Germany. The task was in itself almost a hopeless one. The Bun- 
destag, or Federal, or, more properly. Confederate, diet at Frank- 
fort was a contemptible farce galvanized sometimes into a tempor- 
ary police activity by artificially applied stimulus from Metter- 
nich. It was not representative and indicated no national life 
unity or hope. The separate states were all pursuing petty politics 
always selfish and often foolish and none more so than Prussia. 
The king was fast sinking into a nonentity, the crown prince 
was a Mediaeval reactionary, and the ruling party, that of the 
nobles or Junkers pursued a selfish policy of favoritism in legis- 
lation for the landed interests and won a series of Phyrrus victo- 
ries over the sullen citizens, and stupid peasants. Liberalism 
was largely represented by ultramontane editors and hare-brained 
students. The great historian Ranke might justly criticise 
theoretic Utopias, its unnational and homeless cosmopolitan 
and its blatant clamor for unrestrained license of tongue and 
pen. 

School, religious, and academic questions monopolized to a 
great extent the minds of the people. 

In 1825 the separation of the school from the church made 
great progress through the division and separation of several of 
the provincial colleges from the church consistories. 

At the Jubilee festival of the Reformation in 181 7, Frederick 
William III began to set in operation his efEorts towards uniting 
the Calvanistic or Reformed church with the Lutheran. He 
promised at first that he would only recommend and not com- 
mand, that force should not be used in carr5ang out this idea, a 
promise that he more than once broke. The sharp antipathies 
between the two confessions had long since worn away in the 
minds of the com.mon people, but were still cherished by many 
theologians, especially of the strong Lutheran type led by Claus 
Harms from Holstein. The difficulty of uniting the two faiths 



THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS IN PRUSSIA. 151 

Vv-as aggravated by the fact that the king had worked out a 
Liturgj' which he had used for some time in the Garrison 
church for the alleged purpose of making the service richer and 
more poetic. It was objected against this that it left no tim.e 
for the seiTxiOn and thus crowded what should be the most im- 
portant part of the service into the background. Many Lutheran 
Prussians objected to the "Reformed" convictions of the Hohen- 
zollern family which had been for a long time Calvanistic. The 
great mass of the Lutheran clerg>^ opposed the union led by the 
celebrated twelve Berlin clergymen with Schleiermacher at their 
head, but the king won a final victor}^ though at the cost of 
revising and shortening his Liturg\' so as to give more room for 
the sermon. At this time the conflict betv/een "Orthodoxy" 
and "Rationalism" began also to take the prominent place it has 
ever since held. In one respect only was there an indication of 
the leading part Prussia was one day to play and that was in 
the formation of the Customs Union (Zoll Verein). The his- 
tory' of its form.ation was briefly this : 

England had accumulated great quantities of goods during 
the war with Napoleon which she could not get rid of on ac- 
count of his continental policy. When peace came she began to 
dump these upon continental countries at prices far below the 
cost of m.anufacture, a policy which was ruinous to German 
rnanufacturies and manufacturers as v/ell as to labor by throw- 
ing vast num.bers of workmen on the continent out of v/ork 
because their em.ployers could not compete with these extraordi- 
narily cheapened goods from England. As the prices of food 
stuffs were also very high at the same time there was much 
distress among the poor. The government aggravated tliis dis- 
tress by forbidding the exportation of food products, thus making 
prices still higher in some districts as it was not allovv'ed to ship 
from where things were plentiful in Germany to where they 
were scarce in other provinces of the same land. The Bundes- 
tag v/as appealed to but before jealousies would allow this to 
'act the good crop of 1817 had relieved matters from the stand- 
point of the consumer and the Bundestag declared that action 
was not needed. However, the question of removing restric- 



152 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

tions from trade was not dead. 

Frederick List (the great authority for the protective tarif? 
system in America and father of the theory of protec- 
tion for infant industries in developing states, declar- 
ing it was needed at the middle stage of development 
when passing from an agricultural to a manufacturing state) 
formed a union of merchants and manufacturers and proposed 
to do away with internal tolls and to farm out the customs 
revenues to a stock company. His union offered thirty million 
gulden to have these customs turned over to them. Nebenius, 
the great statesman from Baden, had similar ideas but nothing 
could be done as it required a unanimous vote to carry such a 
measure in the Bundestag. 

Prussia in the meantime began to solve the difficulty 
in her own way. When Prussia recognized her territory 
in 1 8 15 she had found no less than sixty-seven different 
tariff schedules in operation in her various scattered prov- 
inces reaching from Russia to the Rhine, while for one 
traversing Germany at large there were thirty-six different 
boundaries each with its own custom house, nor at any single 
one of these frontiers was the coin of the neighboring state 
accepted, nor were the postal arrangements the same, Prussia 
alone had to guard a customs boundary line of 1,073 miles, 
every one of her scattered and separated provinces being fenced 
round with custom houses and boundaries. Prussias first step 
in 1 81 8, A, D., was to establish a single tariff for all her own 
lands; her next to declare her willingness to accept neighboring 
principalities as partners in her new system (system for revenue 
and not protection.) Some little principalities were shut in 
on all sides by Prussia. By 1826 many of these were forced to 
join, such as Anhalt, Koethen, Anhalt-Dessau, Weimer, Gotha, 
and Schwern. 

Prussia was separated from her own provinces by parts or 
the whole of other countries. These were invited to join on ac- 
count of the manifest advantage of decrease in the customs line 
and uniformity of the custom lavus. 

The profits of Prussia's new system were so enormously in- 



THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS IK PRUSSIA. 153 

creased that one by one the German states entered her customs 
union. Similar rival unions, around Hanover in the north and 
around Bavaria and Wuertemberg in the south are formed, but 
by skill, force, diplomacy and appealing to their love of gain 
these rival unions are dissolved and their members one by one 
joined Prussia. In 1830 the union included a population of 
25,000,000, and a territory of 80,600 square miles. By 1842 
all the states of Germany except Mecklenberg, Hanover, and 
Austria had been absorbed. Austria indeed was not desired for 
the reason, that no reliance could be placed on all her hetero- 
geneous dependencies. After 1854 it embraced 98,000 square 
miles and 35,000,000 inhabitants. The great political result 
of the Zoll Verein was that Germany had found a new center 
apart from Austria and the small states were now bound by 
ties of commercial interest to Prussia. The final political sup- 
remacy was however not yet or only dim.ly foreseen. Even 
Metternich did not recognize the significance of the customs 
union movement while the Liberals in so far as they perceived 
its significance looked on it with horror as increasing the influ- 
ence of an unbridled despotism. This taril? policy of Prussia 
which first became known as the German Zoll Verein, in 1833 
owed its earlier inspiration to von Motz. His plans were elabo- 
rated and improved by Maassen the minister of finance at the 
time when the tariff boundaries became practically national. Its 
success might indicate to the thoughtful mind of some statesmen 
that Prussia might as in this continue to serve her own interest 
and yet become the agent of a larger destiny for all Germany 
for this was to be the road that finally led to unity and not that 
blocked by the Liberal doctrinaries. 

Frederick William III, however, obtained no glimpse of 
this brighter day, and the later years of his life were spent in an 
inglorious wrangle with the ultramontane party headed by the 
Archbishop of Cologne. 

In 1803, thanks to Napoleon, the Ecclesiastical Electoral 
states of the old Holy Roman Empire with the corresponding 
"ishcprics were secularized, a part of these territories including 
Co!C2;ne passed to the possession of Prussia. 



154 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

At the Congress of Vienna when the Pope coolly demanded 
that the Ecclesiastical states be restored to the Papacy and to 
their old political position and power, his proposition only pro- 
voked smiles from the representatives of the assembled powers. 
In 1 82 1 the Bull "de salute animarum," the pope, Pius VIII, 
acqiesced in the accomplished facts of history and from 1821 to 
1827 redistricted his clergy founding fifteen Bishoprics and Arch- 
bishoprics in Protestant Germany (i. e. everj^thing outside of 
A^ustria and Bavaria) Prussia got the Archbishopric of Cologne 
and three Bishoprics in the west, and the Archbishopric, Posen- 
Gnesen, and three Bishoprics in the east. 

There had been in Germany a Protestant movement and also 
a movement tovv^ards Liberalism in theology even among the 
Catholic professors. In the Tyrol the inhabitants of the Ziller 
valley with their clergy forsook the old faith. A Catholic pro- 
fessor in Vienna denied the divinity of Jesus. Professor Hermes, 
of Muenster and Bonn, was the most celebrated of the Catlholic 
professors who attempted to reorganize Christianity rather as a 
philosophical system than to regard it as a revelation. Against 
this there sprang up a strong reaction in the Rhine provinces — the 
old ecclesiastical territory. Joseph Goerrezs led in the movement 
for the strict Catholicism. He was a religious zealot as well as 
a fanatic for the cause of freedom, and hated Prussia with all 
his heart. In the movement of which he was a prime mover 
the old superstitions experienced a revival. The m.iracle working 
pictures and images of the mother of God v/ere refurbished and 
set to their healing work again. Various fanatjcs or frauds 
came into repute as wonder workers. Marie von Moerl in the 
Tyrol, experienced on every Friday the death struggle of the 
Saviour dying at last and remaining dead for several minutes. 

The Duke Friedrich von Gotha and the Duke von Koethen 
and wife with many other prominent and even learned men be- 
came converts to Catholicism. The Jesuits, whose order had been 
restored by Pius VII in 1814, although as yet only, tolerated by 
the governments of Naples and Sardinia Spain and a few Swiss 
cantons, were behind the movement. 

In Prussia the government had been very liberal even im- 



THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS IN PRUSSIA. ISS 

posing taxes for the benefit of the Cologne Cathedral and for 
the furnishing of the new Bishoprics but a point of difficulty 
arose over the question of mixed marriages. By a cabinet order 
in 1835 it was declared that where Protestants and Catholics 
had mani^d the religion of the father should be taught the 
child unless the parents had expressly made another arrangement 
before the marriage. 

The Catholic church refused to recognize the legality of such 
mixed marriages at all unless it should have the sole right to 
educate the children. After a long controversy taken part in 
by several popes, Pope Gregory XVI, a religious zealot, came to 
the Papal chair and when in 1835 the Archbishop Spiegel of 
Cologne died, Droste Vischering, an ardent Romanist and 
ultramontanist on the foolish recommendation of the crown 
prince was elected to the vacant archbishopric of Cologne. This 
brought affairs to a head, and the Roman church in the Rhine 
provinces and in Polen-Gnesen headed by its clergy was soon 
in open revolt against the Prussian government. The king was 
at last forced to arrest Droste Vishering as well as the Arch- 
bishop of Polen-Gnesen. The Archbishop was confined in the 
fortress of Minden and the Pope and the Rheinish press and the 
people broke out in a storm of rage against the government. 

In the midst of the storm Frederick William III died on 
June 7, 1840. 

The new king, Frederick William IV, after receiving a few 
concessions and making many, released the Archbishop and 
begged the Pope to make him a cardinal, surrendered to every 
demand of the Pope, allowed Droste Vischering to choose his 
coadjutor successor in Cologne when he went to Rome, and 
wrote a personal letter to the Archbishop, who had resolutely 
refused every concession, acquitting him of the suspicion of 
revolution. By this surrender on the part of the Protestant 
king to every demiand of the papal curia the long strife was 
ended. A German king had gone once more to Canossa. 



CHAPTER XV. 



EARLY YEARS OF LOUIS PHILLIPPE S REIGN. 



At the time the "Citizen-king" ascended his semi-republican 
throne, the Republican party was perhaps the least dangerous, al- 
though by no means the least bitter and loud of the triolgy 
of parties which opposed him. Bonapartism was the most 
dangerous ; and even Bourbonism perhaps outranked Republican- 
ism. From the first two he was delivered by no less potent in- 
strumentalities than the cradle and the grave. A death and a 
birth were his redeemers. 

The close of the year 1832 saw him temporarily freed from 
fear of both Bonapartists and Bourbonists. The death of Na- 
poleon's son blighted the hopes of the Bonapartists. The young 
Duke of Reichstadt, who had been crowned in babyhood king of 
Rome (after the fashion of the old emperors of the Holy Roman 
Ernpire), died in the course of this year. The 3'oung eagle had 
never escaped from the Austrian cage that Metternich had pre- 
pared for him. In his grave was buried, for a long time, the 
hope of the Bonapartists. 

The other event perhaps deserves more extended mention. 
Charles X, after his exile and the recognition of the treachery 
of the Duke of Orleans, had named as regent the Duchess of 
Berry, the widowed mother of the child pretender, Henry 
V. Her adherents were few. Paris indulged no Bour- 
bon sj'mpathy. The shoemaker, Poncelet, engaged in a Bour- 
bon conspiracy, which despite the personal bravery of 
Poncelet, vras easily suppressed. La, V^endee was friendly to 
the claims of the duchess and kept up a desultoy and inef- 
fective guerrilla warfare. It was dangerous to depend on this, 
but relying on friends in the south of France and assisted by 
contributions from the Portugese, Sardinian, and Dutch courts, 
she determined to undertake an invasion of France from the 
south. She expected the people to rise to her support. Accord- 
ingly, accompanied by a few followers, she landed at Carry, 
near Marseilles. Her attempt was absolutely ignored by all 
but the police, who would have arrested her if they had not 



158 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

made a mistake in the woman and sent the wrong person to 
Pari?. This error allowed the duchess to escape to the Vendee, 
where she endeavored to kindle the nres of insurrection. After 
a small and momentary success, she was again obliged to flee. 
This time her escape was aided by the report that she had perish- 
ed in the burning Castle Penissiere. 

Her good fortune did not enable her- to escape from France 
and her hiding place was revealed to the government by the 
treachery of a Jew who had proselyted to the Christian religion, 
and who received as the price of his treachery half a million 
francs. Even after the house was pointed out the ofHcers could 
not find her until the seventh of November, when the building 
of a fire in an unused fireplace caused her to come out, half suf- 
focated, from a hidden retreat behind the chimney. 

She was imprisoned near Bordeaux, and there made the start- 
ling statement to her captors that she was about to become a 
m.other. This statement from a widow, som.e years after the 
death of her husband, caused great interest in the posthumous 
child. She attempted to justify herself by claiming that she had 
been secretly married a second time. When the report was an- 
nounced, her partisans bitterly denounced it as a treacherous 
slander of the government. The governm.ent, however, was 
content to quietly await an event which occurred on May 9, 
1833, when the duchess gave birth to a son whose father was al- 
leged to be the Count Lucchisi Palli of Sicily. After the birth 
of the child, the duchess was released from her imprisonment 
and shipped to Sicily. In this ridiculous serio-comic fashion did 
the last hopes of the Bourbons perish in France. 

The Republicans, despite their weakness, becam^e ever more 
active and more bitter. Lafayette, Dupont, and Treilhard had 
given up their offices before the close of 1830. Lafaj^ette had 
retired fully realizing the vanity of his dream of a throne sur- 
rounded v/ith republican institutions. 

The minister, Sebastiani, had irritated the Republicans by an- 
nouncing the fall of Warsaw with the phrase, "Order reigns in 
Warsaw." Lafitte had become a bankrupt, and his successor, 
Casimer-Perier, again angered the Republicans by his statement 



EARLY YEARS OF LOUIS PHILLIPPE'S REIGN. 159 

in his first address that "Liberty must be achieved by every peo- 
ple for itself and France's blood belongs to France." This was 
intended as a w^arning to German and other Republicans, and 
strengthened the citizen-king with the occupants of the other 
European thrones. 

In the last month of 1831, an attempted revolution was 
quenched, in the literal sense of the word, by turning the fire- 
hose on the rioters, dispersing them, and dampening their ardor 
and their clothes. 

Perier held down all rioting with an iron hand until he suc- 
cumbed to the cholera on May 16, 1832. This plague rea:'.:c 
France in this month and broke out with shocking suddenness 
at a ball in the opera house, and inside of four weeks had sla." 
18,000 persons. The cholera and the death and funeral celebra 
tion of General Lamarque, the radical leader, served as an oc- 
casion for new riots, and these in turn gave opportunity for new 
and strenuous measures of reaction. 

It was now manifest that the house of Orleans was in all 
essential respects as dynastical and arbitrary as the house of 
Bourbon. None of these riots endangered the Orleans dynasty,' 
yet the Soult ministry, (since October 11, 1832) the courts, 
and a parliament, entirely servile to the crown, united to utterly 
crush the revolutionary secret societies and the republican agi- 
tators. 

By the laws of 1833 and 1834, the selling of the liberal news- 
papers on the streets was prohibited. The existence of all so- 
cieties, unions, and organizations, whether political or not, was 
made dependent on the express permission of the king; and the 
sphere of operation for trial by jury was circumscribed. These 
laws in their turn caused insurrections in Lyons, Paris, Lune- 
ville, Grenoble, Nimes, and other smaller places diiring the 
year 1834. They were suppressed with no great difficulty. The 
Republicans suffered a severer blow in the death of the aged 
Lafayette in May of this year. 

Moreover, the old republicanism was beginning to give way 
and to change its character before the rush of communistic and 
socialistic ideas propagated by such men as St. Simon, Fourier, 



160 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

Bounarotti, and their successors, although the significance of 
the secret spread of these ideas was not yet perceived. Republi- 
canism, as well as Eourbonism and Bonapartism, may be con- 
ceived of as prostrate at the close of the year 1834. 

As alv/ays when revolutionists are in despair, there followed 
a series of attempts to assassinate the king. An attempted as- 
sassination is a sign of conscious weakness. The first one had 
been the attempt of Bergeron in 1832. The most fearful was 
that of the Corsican Fieski on July 18, 1835. As Louis accom- 
panied by a great retinue was passing along the boulevard du 
Temple, the Corsican fired at him a demoniacal machine, r.ome- 
thing like a gatling gun. The king escaped injury, hut some 
sixty of his attendants were killed or wounded. This attempt 
led in September to further arbitrary laws. The most important 
of these was, that in order to convict by jury in criminal cases, 
from henceforth only a majority, and not a two-thirds majority 
as heretofore, was required. The Republicans and Socialists 
continued their unsuccessful attempts at assassination categoried 
as follows: Alibaud in 1836; later in the same year, Meunier; 
Huber in 1838; Darmes in 1840; Lecomipte in 1846, and later 
in the same j^ear, Henrj^ In 1839 an attempt to ground a 
socialistic Republic led by Barbes, Blanqui and Bernard was 
easily suppressed. 

Still feebler than these prancings of the Republicans, were the 
two efforts which the Bonapartists made to overthrow the July 
monarchy. After the death of the Duke of Reichstadt, Prince 
Louis Napoleon, whose father was the former king of Holland, 
and whose mother was Hortense Beauharnais, the step-daughter 
of the emperor, looked upon himself as the heir to the Bona- 
partist claims. The assum.ption was somewhat violent since not 
only his father, but also all the other brothers of the emperor, 
of whom Joseph and Lucian v/ere older than Louis, were still 
living. 

Louis Napoleon was born in 1808. He was educated in 
Germany, and after having taken part in the Italian Revolution, 
had been living in Arenberg on Lake Constance. He had held 
consultations with dissatisfied French officers in Baden-Baden, 



EARLY YEARS OF LOUIS PHILLIPPE'S REIGN. 161 

M^hich resulted in a conspiracy to overthrow the July monarchy. 
The prince had only very limited means of carrying out his 
plans, but his ambition drove him on to try the adventure. 

On the 2gth of October, 1836, to the great horror of his as- 
sociates, who realized it was too soon to act, he appeared in 
Strassburg. The most important officer whom he had won was 
Vaudrey, Colonel of the Fourth Artillerj^, although the non- 
commissioned of?.cer Persigny was most active in the propa- 
ganda. All told only about fifteen to twenty persons were in 
the secret. On October 30, at five o'clock in the morning, the 
prince appeared before Vaudrey's regiment in the uniform of the 
Emperor. Speeches which he and the Colonel made to the sol- 
diers were answered by shouts of "Long live the Emperor." 
The arrest of the Cammandant Voirol and the Prefect was 
also successfully accomplished, but there were no cries of enthusi- 
asm as the Prince marched through the street with his regiment. 
The infantry in the barracks, put an end to the whole fiasco by 
arresting the pretender when he came up with his artillerists. A 
little scuffle between the infantry and the artillery and the 
Vv^hole farce was over. 

The king thought it the v/isest plan, so far as the Prince was 
concerned, to look upon the whole affair as a youthful prank. 
Without entering upon legal proceedings, they had him embark 
in Cherbourg for America, at first he relented this contemp- 
tuous leniency but afterwards sent a letter of thanks to the 
king and begged that his fellow conspirators be treated 
with mercy. The king had no such intention, but the people did 
not want to see the small offenders punished when the chief was 
let go. The Strassburg jurors declared all the accused not 
guilty to the great annoyance of the government. 

But that was not the only trouble which the king prepared 
by his inopportune mildness. The next year the Prince returned 
from America, and again took up his residence as a Swiss citizen 
at Arenberg. Now Louis Phillippe demanded his expulsion, 
and gathered 25,000 men on the frontier. Rather than submit 
ignominiously, or plunge his adopted country into war, the 
Prince weivt to England. Here he lived several years, spent 



162 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROffi. 

parti}' in political studies and partly in careless dissipation. He 
published here his "Napoleonic Ideas," in which he tried to 
show that he was in sympathy with the democratic demands of 
the time. 

The applause with which the French people greeted the prop- 
osition made by Louis Phillippe and agreed to by England to 
bring back to France the remains of the great Napoleon from the 
Island of St. Helena deceived Louis Napoleon into a belief, for 
which his own inclination had prepared him, that the time was 
ripe for another attempt to gain the French throne. On De- 
cember 15, 1840, the ashes of the Bonaparte were laid to rest 
in their massive marbles under the Dome of the Invalides; but 
before they arrived Louis Napoleon had again played and lost, 
lie landed at Boulougne on August 6, 1840, in the company of 
a few followers. One of them, Monthyions, had shared the 
exile of the great uncle. Some of these few followers had shared 
the young Prince's fortunes in the former attempt at Strassburg. 
The little party went to the barracks of the forty-second regi- 
ment of the line where a Lieutenant, Aldenidze, was a confed- 
erate, but the soldiers refused to follow them and the whole 
party retreated in great haste pursued by the authorities. In 
attempting to gain their boat, they all capsized in the water, 
and after being pulled out with boat-hooks, were dragged off to 
jail. This time the king refused a pardon, although the father 
of the young prince asked for it on the ground that his son was 
lacking in sense, and Napoleon was imprisoned in the Fortress 
of Ham in the same cell that had been occupied by Polignac. 

But, although all attempts against his government so signally 
and even so laughably failed, Louis Phillipe grew continually 
more unpopular. He preferred insignificant men in his ministry ; 
but, whoever was there, the policy was always the same and 
always t!ie king's. The chambers were as ftibservient to 
him as the ministry. Mole, Mcntebello, Soult, succeeded each 
other in the ministry, until the refusal of the king to put some 
one at the head of the ministry with a party majority behind 
him, caused the chambers to refuse a wedding appropriation to 
the Duke of Nemours, whereupon Thiers was made prime mini-^ 
ster. Tliis time it was the Spanish question, as four years earlier 
it was the Oriental cucGtion that caused t!\e do;vn(all. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



WARS OF THE PRETENDERS IN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 



The disturbances in Spain and in Portugal stood in close 
connection with each other. 

On the death of the restored king of Portugal in 1826, the 
natural and legitimate successor was his son, Dom Pedro the 
Emperor of Brazil. But as he did not like to leave Brazil 
even to assume the crown of Portugal, he transferred his claim 
to his seven year old daughter, Donna Maria de Gloria, and 
appointed as guardian, his younger brother, Dom Miguel, 
was to assume the regency as soon as he had accepted the 
hand of his little niece which was offered to him in mai'riage. 
Until that time the Infanta Maria Isabella, the daughter of 
John VI, was to retain the regency. This princess had no 
sooner set the Constitution in operation than the absolutist 
party took up weapons against her, and the insurrection soon 
assumed such alarming proportions that the regent was obliged 
to turn to England for help. 

This insurrection was openly carried on in the name of Dom 
Miguel, although he was not j'^et in the country, and was 
heartily supported by Spain, The regent's appeal to England 
happened to be made in that fortunate hour when Canning 
was at the helm of affairs of State and he did not hesitate to 
send her the assistance needed. In a great oration in the House 
of Commons he proclaim.ed England to be the city of refuge 
for all the enslaved and unhappy of the earth. The landing in 
Portugal of an English army under Clinton sufficed in short 
order to restore the peace and to force the insurgents into 
Spain. But unfortunately for the cause of liberalism all over 
the earth, a few months later Canning died. There now oc- 
curred in Vienna conferences between the representatives of 
Dom Miguel, of Austria and of England in which the first 
on the 19th of October, 1827, recognized the rights of his 
brother and accepted the regency in the name of his niece, who 
was still in Brazil with her father. 

On the 22nd. of February, 1828, Dom Miguel having trav- 
eled from Vienna by wav of London and Paris, entered Lisbon 



164 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

in order to take the oath to support the Constitution and to 
assume the reins of the government. 

Once in office, he immediately surrounded himself with min- 
isters of the absolutist party, dissolved the Cortez and appointed 
a commission to discuss and decide on alterations in the Consti- 
tution. Once more he stood fully under the influence of his 
revenge-seeking mother, Carlotta, and of the clergy, headed by 
his Father Confessor, Father Mazedo. It soon became unmis- 
takable that the people were being urged on to repudiate the 
Constitution and the young queen Maria Gloria. The Miguel- 
ists openly asserted that if Dom Pedro, so long as he remained- 
Emperor of Brazil, could not take Portugal's crown, he certainly 
had no right to transfer his passive and inoperative right to his 
daughter; but if he, Pedro, preferred Brazil to Portugal, then 
the next in succession, Dom Miguel, was' the legitimate heir to 
the crown. They still more vehemently resented the claim that 
the Em^peror of Brazil had a right to impose a constitution on 
the mother country as Dom Pedro hnd done. 

All of this although Dom Pedro had already reorganized the 
claims of the 3'oung queen, was conducting the regency in her 
name, and had sworn to support the Constitution. Only by 
open perjury could he escape his oath. But the clergy in the 
whole land instituted a clamorous agitation against the existing 
state of aflfairs and sent in countless addresses urging the regent 
ro dissolve the Cortez and to summons the old Estates. 

Dom Miguel did not allcAv him«eif to be begged verv^ long 
although even Metternich threatened, if he yielded to the cleri- 
cal demand, that he would vv'ithdraw the Austrian amibassador. 
On the third of May, 1828, Miguel called the Cortez of Lame- 
go together again, and was proclaimed by them on June 26, 
1828, as king. 

Now followed a horrible reign of terror. With the aid of 
the sei-vile army and the more servile police, the new king sup- 
pressed every opposition. The jails filled and overflowed. By 
the end of the year, they contained 15,000 political victims. 
There was no longer a place to confine them, the cry arose kill, 
kill, deport to Africa, and in the six terrible years that his reign 



WARS OF THE PRETENDERS IN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL. 165 

lasted it is said that 17,000 persons were decapitated or shot, 
16,000 were deported into exile in burning Africa, 13,000 were 
burnt at the stake and 26,000 were cast into prison. 

To those loyal to Queen Maria there remained no choice save 
flight. The only place of refuge, the only spot that remained 
true to the little queen was the Island of Terceira, the largest 
of the Azores group, where the faithful Cabreira was governor. 
There the fugitives collected, although Wellington did all in his 
power to hinder him. While Wellington did not openly recog- 
nize Dom Miguel, yet he was of the greatest service to him. 
Metternich and the eastern European powers strongly intoned 
the legimate rights of Donna Maria Gloria but wanted to see 
a compromise that would leave Miguel in power. 

The little queen finally arrived from Brazil in England De- 
cember 1828, as yet ignorant of all the developments that had 
taken place. 

She found a friendly reception in London but not the slightest 
support by the Wellington ministry, and hastened back to 
Brazil. Miguel although he had been formally recognized 
only by the United States, Spain, and the Pope had no cause to 
be dissatisfied vith his situation. The July revolution and 
the fall of the tories in England alterod the situation, espe- 
cially as at this tiinf Miguel committed offences against the 
persons and property of English and French citizens. This waj 
the more foolish as neither the English nor the French cabinet 
had reco(inized the usurper a? King. The one designated 
him as Prince Regent, the other as the de facto ruler of the land. 

English and French fleets now forced humiliating concessions 
and reparation of the French fleet carried the entire Portu- 
gese fleet as a prize of war back to Brest. A new insurrection 
broke out in Lisbon and Operto that cost hundreds of ofiicers 
and citizens their lives as forfeits. But all this was only a cur- 
tain raiser to a greater undertaking. Don Pedro decided to per- 
sonally enter the arena and fight for the rights of his daughter. 
Transferring the imperial crown of Brazil to his six year old 
son Pedro II, he sailed for Europe and appeared in Paris and 
then in London in July and August as the Duke of Braganza 



166 POLITICAL HISTORY 01* EUROPE. 

and began earnestl)^ his preparations to reconquer Portugal. 

With Terceira as a base Dom Pedro landed on Portugeese 
soil July 7jj[8S2, with an army of 12,000 men. Opporto speed- 
■ J ily^ell but then for a long time he was able to press no further 
and finally Miguel besieged him there. Meantime the Liberals 
everywhere were fervid in the espousal of Donna Maria's 
cause. Lord Palmerston denounced Miguel in the House of 
Commons as: "This destroyer of constitutional freedom, this 
perjured usurper, this enslaver of this fatherland, who lusts 
after the life of a helpless and defenceless woman." 

In 1833 the English Captain, Charles Napier and the Duke 
of Terceira changed the fortune of war. Napier destroyed the 
fleet of Dom Miguel of the poin of Cape Vicente and he 
and Terceira together, attacking by lands and sea, captured 
Lisbon. Miguel and his French general Marshal Bourmont fail- 
ed in their assaults on both Oporto and Lisbon. But the men 
of the reaction from Spain and France hastened to the aid of 
Miguel and all was not yet lost for him. 

Just at this time events in Spain served to strengthen his 
cause. On September 29th, 1833, King Ferdinand VII, of Spain 
died and the war of the Spanish succession was united to that 
of the Portuguese. The causes were these. For years the peo- 
ple had been accustomed to regard Don Carlos the brother of 
Ferdinand VII, as the successor to the Spanish throne. Inas- 
much as three marriages of the king had proven to be childless. 
But he married for the fourth lime in December, 1829 (less than 
six months after the death of his last wife,) Maria Christiana a 
sister of Ferdinand II, of Naples and of the Duchess of 
Berry, and promulgated a few months later on the 29, of 
March, 1830, a law called the Pragmatic Sanction by which 
he annulled the order of succession to the throne which had 
prevailed since 17 13. According to this law the throne was 
only hereditary in the male line. The new decree re- 
instated the old Castiliaa law which allowed a woman to 
succeed to the throne. The king was now manifestly ill v/ith 
a fatal sickness and Don Carlos was thoroughly the tool of the 
extreme Clerical party. On October 10, 1830 the expected 



WARS OF THE PRETENDERS IN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL. 167 

child was born and proved to be a daughter, and a year and a 
quarter later another daughter was born to the royal pair. The 
intense sickness of the king and the influence Don Carlos had 
over him caused him apparently with the consent of the queen 
to annul the Pragmatic Sanction. After this revocation contrary 
to all expection he temporarily recovered and under the influe- 
ence the queen again renewed it. 

Don Carlos' subservience to the clericals left the queen no 
choice if she wished to preserve her childrens rights save to turn 
to the liberals for help. To strengthen her position while the 
king still lived, the queen was made regent and Don Carlos fled 
to Portugal. Even before the king died the populace was re- 
quired to swear allegiance to the queen regent and to the girl 
queen. This accomplished king Ferdinand died. 

Don Carlos neglected the immediate favorable opportunity to 
raise a successful insurrection. The minister Zea Bermudez 
tried to trim between the liberal and clerical parties for a time 
but was at last forced to resign. His successor Martinez de la 
Rosa an avowel liberal brought about on April lO, 1834 the 
re-establishment of Constitutional government promulgated the 
Estatlite P^eal and established a Cortez with two chambers, the 
Proceres and the Procuratores. 

On April 22, 1834, <^^ ^'^ Rosa and Lord Palmerston brought 
about the Quadruple Alliance of England, France, Portugal, 
and Spain. As a result the Spanish General, Rodil, united his 
forces with those of Doiri Pedro, the combined forces of Miguel 
and Carlos were defeated and in the treaty of Evora Dom Mi- 
guel in consideration of a yearly income of 375,000 francs, re- 
nounced his claims on the Portuguese crov/n and promised not 
to interfere in the Spanish embroglio, Don Carlos escaped on a 
British ivarship to England. Dom Miguel i-ecalled his renun- 
ciation as soon as he reached Genoa, bur he had played his po- 
litical role to the bitter end. He subsequently married a Ger- 
man princess, Loewenstein Wertheim, and lived for thirty years 
fully forgotten in Germ.any, finally dying at Heubach on No- 
vember 14, 1866. 

Don Carlos on the contrai*y began now to be really danger- 



168 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

ous. The Pyreannean Basques took up his cause out of hatred 
to the liberal party, because that party wished to destroy their 
privileges as a border march and enclose them in the common 
boundar)^ line of Spain. Between their province and Spain the 
union was more personal than organic, and they were freed from 
taxes and tariffs while their position on the border gave them 
every opportunity to grow rich by smuggling and to grow ex- 
pert in guerrilla warfare. Their great leader wao Thomas 
Zumalacarregui. On both sides the most barbarous acts of 
cruelty were perpetrated. Grej'beards, children and women 
were not spared. The Basque officer, Cabrero revanged the 
shooting of his aged mother by the Christinos by putting to a 
bloody death twenty-four of the wives of his liberal enemies. 

The guerrilla warfare, the mountain pass&s and fastnesses, the 
lack of roads all over the land and the almost equal strength of 
both parties made a speedy decision impossible. The Christinos 
held Madrid and the greater portion of the South, the Carlists 
held the North and the mountain fastnesses, to which army 
after army of the young queen was decoyed and there destroyed. 
At last Rosa appealed to England and France for help, a meas- 
ure he had been reluctant to take because alien interference, 
especially of Frenchmen, would prejudice his party with the 
natives. Permission was given by France for the Foreign Legion 
serving in Algiers to take service with the Spanish queen. In 
the meantime, it was momentarily expected both in Madrid and 
in the camp of the Basque general that Zumalacerregui would 
speedily take Madrid. But Don Carlos himself who was in his 
camp, influenced by his court favorites, ordered Zumalacaregui 
to attack Bilboa instead. In obeying this command and making 
the assault he received a mortal wound. 

The radical liberals whose chief strength was in Andalusia 
were clamoring for the restoration of the Constitution of 1812. 
The Christianos were obliged to resist these as well as the Carl- 
ists. Ministers were repeatedly changed without bettering the 
situation. Help was sought clamorously, but almost vainly, 
from France, England and Portugal. On August 13, 1836, 
the Andalusian radicals invaded the retreat of the regent Maria 



WARS OF THE PRETENDERS IN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL. 169 

Christina at La Granja and entering her very sleeping chamber, 
forced her to accept the idolized Constitution of i8i2. The 
mob ruled in Madrid, France was estranged, and the moderate 
liberals could no longer disguise from themselves that they were 
closer in belief to the Carlists than to the Radicals. A few con- 
cessions and Don Carlos had succeeded, but he did not make 
them. He lost instead something of his military advantage by 
a defeat incurred in a second attempt to capture Bilboa. The 
accident of an attack in a snow storm just when the city seemed 
ready to fall in his hands cost him the victory. After various 
battles lost and v/on and a too dilatory and tedious campaign, 
Don Carlos on September 12, 1837, stood with his army in 
sight of the towers of the capital city of Madrid. 

But although he came and saw he did not conquer. Nay, he 
did not even dare attack and without striking a blow he ordered 
the retreat. 

Kis approach had only served to unite the liberals. The 
radical wing made concessions to the more conservative sup- 
porters of the queen and the leadership in both political and 
military affairs fell into the capable hands of Espartero. As 
Don Carlos' threatened attack united the liberals his humiliating 
retreat increased the factional strife among his followers. Ke 
dared not trust his generals and they dared neither trust him 
nor each other. This fear drove the moi-t capable of his officers 
Moroto to betray him. Moroto entered into negotiations with 
Espartero offering his allegiance to the young queen on condition 
that she would marry the oldest son of Don Carlos. 

The refusal of the condition caused a renewal of hostilities 
that resulted in an uninterrupted series of victories and the new 
title of Duque de la Victoria, for Espartero. Fear that his 
former negotiations would be discovered, now caused Moroto to 
enter into tlie Treaty of Vergara. This guaranteed their 
special privileges to the Basques and their rank and position to 
Moroto's officers. In return for these concessions granted large- 
ly at the instance of the English Admiral, Hay, Maroto marched 
with his troops, the flower of Don Carlos', army, into the camp 
of the Christinos. 

The pretender fled to France and transferred his claims to his 
son, the Count of Moutemolin, who u'surped the name of Don 
Carlos VT. Don Carlos died in Trieste in 1855. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

ORIENTAL QUESTIONS — REVOLT OF MEHEMED ALI AND CON- 
FLICTING INTERESTS OF THE GREAT POWERS AFGHANIS- 
TAN AND THE FAR EAST — THE OPIUM WAR. 

No better example can be found to show how suddenly and 
unexpectedly the interests of the Great Powers may be thrown 
into conflict, than the revolt of Mehemed Ali, the viceroy of 
Egypt, the Sultan's great vassal. Mehemed Ali was himself a 
statesman worthy of rank with the second class at least of the 
Eudopean statesman of his day and his step son Hassan or Ibra- 
him the armed instrument of his policy deserves to rank in the 
first class of generals of that day and as one of the great cavalry 
leaders of the world. 

The prosperity of Mehamed's administration in Egypt had 
enlarged his ambitions and the revelation of the weakness of his 
feudal lord as shown in the Greek war had served to convince 
him that only he himself would be to blame if he did not in- 
crease both his provinces and his powers. The first objects of 
his ambition were the pashalik of Damascus anr the suzereignty 
over Syria. A dispute with Abdallah Pasha of Acre in which 
the Sultan had decided against the Egyptian gave sufficient ex- 
cuse for aggression. The time was well chosen. The Polish 
question and the presence of French troops in Belgium gave the 
great powers something to occupy their attention and the Sultan 
was weakened by revolts in Bosnia and Albania and by the dis- 
affection that still lingered from the suppression of the Janiz- 
aries. 

Ibrahim captured in quick succession Gaza, Jaffa and Jeru- 
salem and beseiged the fortress Acre around whose walls so 
many hostile armies had been encamped from the days of 
Richard of the Lion's Heart to those of Napoleon the Great. 
Acre was taken by storm on May 25, 1832, and after the Sul- 
tan's armies had suffered two successive defeats, Horns and 
Aleppo submitted to the Conqueror. Ibrahim passed swiftly 
throug the Taurus passes and penetrated to Konieh (the anci- 
ent Iconium) in the heart of Asia Minor, where on December 



ORIENTAL QUESTIONS, ETC. 171 

21, the Turkish reserve army under Reshid Pasha was over- 
whelmingly defeated. 

The way to Constantinople now lay open and the foreign 
ofHcers in Ibrahims entourage encouraged him to march at once 
on the capital and by dethroning the Osmanli dynasty bloodily 
expunge the decree that had declared him firmanli or outlawed. 

Such a course was strictly among the possibilities, but the 
ambition of the Egyptian faltered before such a flight and his 
hesitation gave time to the Sultan Mahmoud II, to seek alien 
aid. After vainly applying to England for a fleet, the Sultan 
turned to Russia, with which country he had been on increas- 
ingly friendly term.s since the treaty of Adrianople, and there 
found ready assistance. 

The v^^estern powers saw with astonishment and fear that 
Russian influence would soon be overwhelming in Stamboul and 
vvrent earnestly to work to checkmate its force. Hampered 
by lack of an army or navy they could only paint the danger in 
lurid colors that would ensue to the Sultan if he becam.e a 
vassal of the Czar and urged him rather to submit to almost 
any kind of an agreement with Ibrahim. The latter's demands 
had risen with his successes and he would now be satisfied with 
nothing less than all Syria and the Province of Adana with 
control of the Taurus passes. The Czar cleverly left the Sultan 
untrammeled in m.aking his decision, knowing that if, following 
the advice of England and France, he submitted to humiliating 
terms from his proud subject, he would hold these countries 
responsible therefor and that if he did not his only alternative 
v/ould be to look to Russia as a generous and noble-minded 
rescuer, and that in either case Russian prestige would be en- 
hanced. In this he reasoned well. 

The Sultan under western pressure acceded to Ibrahim's 
terras, mitigated by a renewed oath of vassalage for all the 
Egyptians' territories, but im.mediately closed with Russia the 
treaty of Unkiar-Skelissi — a secret article of w^hich pledged the 
Sultan, in case of war between Russia and any other power, to 
close the Dardanelles to all save Russian warships. 

This eave into the Czar's hand the kev to the Black Sea and 



172 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

put Turkey at the mercy of the autocrat of all the Russias by 
recognizing the right of that power to intervene in the internal 
affairs of the empire. 

The trouble between Egypt and the Porte was not at an end, 
but was merely postponed. The Sultan still cherished con- 
fidence in his army, which was largely under the training of 
Prussian officers, chief among whom was von Moltke. Mahmoud 
instigated insurrections in Syria and counted on the fanatical 
Moslem population of Damascus to help drive out the Egyptian 
who had proclaimed the equality of Christians and Mohamme- 
dans in the newly acquired provinces. 

England and France had also reached the parting of the 
ways. France cast in her fortunes with the Egyptian and Eng- 
land sought to supplant Russia as a favorite of the Porte. Pal- 
merston hoped that under English influence Turkey might give 
a respectable government to her own people and support Eng- 
land against the encroachments of Russia in the east. Thiers, 
the wily minister of Louis Phillippe, hoped by controlling Al- 
giers, exercising an overwhelming influence over Morocco and 
Egypt, and obtaining from Mehemed Ali the possession of 
Syria, to make the Mediterranean a French lake, and block the 
English caravan and river trade routes through Syria to India- 
France's plans if successful would have blocked England's route 
at the Isthmus of Suez and denied her access to the Red Sea. 
At this juncture England seized the opportunity given by the 
plundering of a stranded English vessel to seize the port of 
Aden. A trade treaty between Turkey and England greatly in- 
jurey Mehemed Ali by destioying the monopolies from which he 
drew the greater part of his income. 

Backed now by Russia and England,^ both suppliants for the 
Ottoman favor Mahmoud II was ready to renew the war. 
Ibrahim backed by France, the Maronites, the Druses and 
twenty thousand horsemen sent by the sheiks of the Arabs (who 
have always hated the Turks), was also ready for hostilities. 
The vicery therefore ceased to pay tribute and declared him- 
self independent and all his possessions hereditaiy in his own 
honsr. 



ORIENTAL QUESTIONS, ETC. 173 

The arm}'^ of the Sultan invaded Ibrahim's domains near 
Aleppo and on June 29, the two armies met at Nizib, on the 
Euphrates. Ibrahim again won an overwhelming victory, the 
Ottoman army was destroyed and its commander Hafiz Pasha 
retired upon Marash, abandoning one hundred and sixty pieces 
of artillery. Before the news of this defeat had reached -he 
Sultan, Mahm.oud suddenly died and was succeeded by his six- 
teen-year-old son Abdul-Mejid. 

The commander of the Turkish fleet at the same time de- 
serted with all his vessels and sailed to Alexandria to put the 
navy under the command of Mehamed Ali. Undefended by 
either army or navy, the second time, the way to Constanti- 
nople stood open to Ibrahim, but for all his valor and the suc- 
cess of his arms Ibrahim was to learn the lesson first impressed 
on his mind at Navarino that history is made by the great 
powers. 

That Turkey might not again throw herself bound into the 
arms of Russia, the four great powers declared in a note dated 
July 27, 1839, that they would take the settlement of the 
eastern question in charge. Russia making a virtue of necessity, 
gave her assent to the note as fifth power. Neither England 
nor Russia wished to see Turkey pass from the hands of the 
feeble Ottoman into that of the powerful Egyptian. Austria 
and Prussia suported them. France was isolated. 

The quadruple treaty of July 15, 1 840, concluded by the 
great powers with the exception of France assured to Mehamed 
Ali heredilarj' tenure of Egypt and a part of Syria on condition 
that he submit to the decision of the conference within ten days. 
The viceroy turned to France, but in spite of Thiers' warlike 
threats and the hysteric newspaper demands for the Rhine 
frontier, Louis Phillippe did not dare let it come to war. The 
Thiers ministry was supplanted by that of Guizot, who was 
notoriously friendly toward England and English institutions, 
and Mehamed Ali after defeats in Syria inflicted by the allied 
powers, was glad to accept the terms offered him by the powers. 
The final settlement forced him to continue his tribute to the 
Sultan ; to restore the fleet; to evacuate all his conquests; and to 



174 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

confine himself to Egypt alone. That the terms were as favor- 
able as this was due to England, who wished to make a friend of 
him and thereby assure for herself the passage through Suez. 
In the final adjudication by the powers the Dardanelles were 
again closed to the warships of all nations unless the Sultan him- 
self should be at war. England had again checked the Russian 
march to the Mediterranean. 

In Central Asia, in China, and in Constantinople English 
and Russian interests faced each other in opposition that ever 
threatened to transfer its activity from the arena of diplomacy 
to that of war. Russia pressed steadily into the Caucasus, laid 
iron hand on the eastern coast of the Black Sea and only thinly 
veiled the intention to make of this body of water a Russian in- 
land sea. Urquhart's writings and the jealous fears of the 
East Indian Company pointed out to England that Russia 
cherished a similar policy in regard to the Caspian Sea, and that 
Russian trade interests would eventally overcome the hostility 
of the Emir of Khiva. This opposition was the principal bar- 
rier to effective competition by Russian trade with the English 
commercial interests in Persia and Afghanistan. 

The East India Company in the last decade had overcome 
the hostility of the little states of the Pendshub, had enclosed 
the Indus within the circumference of its power, and by the 
payment of toll had opened a way for trade by v/ay of the 
Kabul pass to Afghanistan. 

In Persia the Shah had learned to fear the Russian name 
since the treaties of Sulistan in 1814 and Turkmantschai in 
1828 had purchased peace from Russia at the cost of vast areas 
of land, including the strategetically important Erivan. Eng- 
land, although professing friendship to Persia had failed to give 
assistance in these times of need and had in consequence lost 
miuch prestige at the Court of Teheran. 

On the death of the Shah Feth Ali in 1834, England attempt- 
ed to regain its influence by supporting Mohammed Mirza's 
claim to the vacant throne. By means of English gold and 
English officers it actually succeeded in esconsing him there, 
only to find that he gave all of his confidence to the Count 



ORIENTAL QUESTIONS, ETC. 175 

Simonitsch, the Russian ambassador at his court.. 

Simonitsch persauded Mirza to ally himself with Dost Mo- 
hammed of Kabul, who had usurped the greater part of the 
Afghanistan, in an expedition against Kamran the Prince of 
Herat. Dost Mohammed had become England's greatest enemy 
and Kamran a most powerful friend. The expedition against 
Herat undertaken by the Shah in July 1837, was not only ac- 
companied by the Russian ambassador but Simonitsch conducted 
the seige in person. Such an act was regarded by the English- 
men in India as a Russian declaration of war and the defense 
of the beleagered city was entrusted to the Englishman Pottinger 
who successfully beat off all attacks until an English fleet could 
make its appearance in the Persian Gulf and take possession of 
the island Karak. 

A threatening note, addressed by the English government to 
Persia, forced the Shah to give up the seige greatly to the dis- 
gust of Simonitsch who now looked to Dost Mohammed alone 
to carry on the war with the result that England promply de- 
clared war on the usurper and, after the speedy capture of Kan- 
dahar, Ghazna, and Kabul, deposed Dost set the lawful claimant 
Schudshan on the throne of Afghanistan, and sent Dost to pen- 
sioned exile in Hindostan. 

This brilliant English triumph was not the only fortunate 
event for England. An expedition of Russia, undertaken against 
the Emir of Khiva, to enforce trade rights wore itself out on 
the boundless stretches of the barren snow-covered steppes and 
had to return without even sighting the enem}^ The expedi- 
tion was nevertheless not without moral effect and sufficiently 
frightened the Emir to cause him to make some concessions. 

Rus'^ias ciiagrin over these two backsets was somewhat miti- 
gated to the fact that in 1841, the Afghans rose in revolt against 
the English and under Dost Mohammed's favorite son Akbar 
Khan fighting in the name of his father, by means of assasination 
and trachery annihilated the English in the Keyber passess. Only 
ten men out of a garrison of 500 at Kabul escaped. The English 
under Pollock immediately retook the land, but when Pollock, 
on account of insufficien troops, returned with his forces, 



176 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EOROFE. 

Akbar Khan at once took possession in the name of his father. 
The English were finallj^ forced in order to protect their inter- 
ests to release Dost Mohamed and so after much bloodshed 
affairs in Afghanistan were restored to almost exactlj' their 
former footing. Affairs went more fortunately for England 
in the Pendschub. From 1843 to 1850 the entire province, 
embracing almost five thousand square miles and three million 
inhabitants, with an annual income of a million pounds Sterl- 
ing, became an English possession. 

During the same period England obtained a great advantage 
over her bulky rival in China, where Russia had enjoyed a 
commanding position since the days of Peter the Great. Russia 
alone of the European powers maintained a permanent embassy 
at the Chinese court and in consequence drove with that land 
a richly flourishing trade. Up to 1834 England's trade rela- 
tions with the Celestial Empire had been conducted exclusively 
througli the East India Company which allowed England a 
monopoly of the Chinese trade, but was permitted by China 
only to do business at Canton, and there only with the privil- 
eged merchants guild of the Hongs. 

The tradesman servility of the company had brought the 
English name into disrepute. Its agents were ready to make 
almost any concession in order to better their business chances 
and the Chinese Government regarded their yearly presents 
and bribery as tribute paid to China by England. This point 
of view was gratifying to China's political vanity, but was 
destined to be rudely shaken when in 1834 the monopoly of 
Chinese trade was taken av.-ay from the Company and all- 
English merchants without restriction were permitted to en- 
gage in it. 

At Pekin, Lord Napier, a Commissioner of the Government, 
took the place of the Company's representative. Lord Napier, 
proud and arbitrary, was not the man to acquiesce in the former 
servile attitude and doubtless made the distinction even sharper 
and harsher than was necessary. Although the points of strife 
were thus multiplied the free trade caused the English exports 
to China to exceed her imports from the Celestial land some 



ORIENTAL QUESTIONS, ETC. 177 

seven million dollars, while the Russians had a five million 
rubel balance on the other side of the ledger. 

The greater part of the English profit was due to the smuggle 
in opium which the Chinese government prohibited less out of 
regard to the physical and moral welfare of its citizens than out 
of the desire to injure English commerce. 

For a few years the Chinese government contented itself 
with proceeding against the opium smugglers of its own nation. 
It confiscated their cargoes and executed a few natives, but 
the English, with small armed boats, themselves plied the trade 
even on the inland rivers and canals until finally the Chinese 
government took by force a large supply of opium (over twenty 
thousands chests) from the factory at Canton and the English 
ships in the haven. This act was accompanied by violence to 
English citizens and insults to the British flag. 

In 1840, war was formally declared. The Chinese opium 
party did not prove to be so successful an affair as the Boston 
Tea Party. The English in the next two years captured Can- 
ton, forced an entrance into the imperial canal, which opened 
a way by water to Pekin itself, and took the strong fortress 
of Tschingkiang. The Chinese emperor accordingly submitted 
and bought a peace by the surrender of the island of Kong-Kong 
that commands Canton, and by opening to European commerce 
the five ports of Canton, Amoy, Futschoy, Ningpo and Shanghai. 
The treaty was signed at Nangking on September 25, 1842. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



THE VIOLATION OF THE CONSTITUTION IN HANOVER — PRUSSIA 
AND THE REVIVAL OF THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CONSTITU- 
TION — THE OLD CATHOLICS THE UNITED LANDTAG, 



On the death of William the Fourth of England, Victoria 
succeeded him on the throne of Great Britain, but according 
to the Salic law his brother, Ernst August, Duke of Cumberland, 
the former head of the Orangemen, the most ardent believer in 
the divine rights of kings and high toryism in general, and withal 
a most accomplished and profligate rake who had accumulated 
debts to the amount of about two million dollars, succeeded 
him on the throne of Hanover. 

This dissolution of the personal union was much to the pleas- 
ure of many in England, who had ever lamented the divided 
heart of their Hannoverian kings, and of more in Germany who 
were glad to see England left without a voice in the German 
Bund. 

But this rejoicing was not shared by the Hannoverians them- 
selves v/ho had flourished under the Constitution and the good 
government vouchsafed the land under the regency of the 
Duke of Cambridge and who had heard too much of Ernst 
August's character to allow them to anticipate his accession 
with any degree of pleasure. 

The new king astonished by his reactionary attitude even 
those who feared the worst. On the fifth of July, 1837, scarce 
fourteen days after his brother's death, he promulgated a patent 
declaring the Constitution void. The reasons alleged were, 
that according to the fundamental law of the land he could 
find no guarantee therein for the happiness of his subjects, and 
because he as heir to the throne had not been consulted nor had 
he given his consent when the Constitution was adopted. The 
real reason was that the royal domains formerly regarded as the 
property of the reigning king and furnishing his chief source 
of support had been transferred to the state as such and the 
king made dependent on a Civil list. With the amount thus 
allowed him he could not pay his debts and the Constitution 



VIOLATION OF THE CONSTITUTION IN HANOVER, ETC. 179 

was accordingly abrogated by patent, and by a second patent of 
November i, 1837, all subjects were released from the oath of 
allegiance they had taken to the constitution. 

The land at large acquiesced in the crime in grim silence or 
at least without resistence. "I subscribe to all, but we are 
dogs nevertheless," said one high officer. But there was to 
be found in the land at least courage enough for a protest. 
What the politicians had not dared to do was done by seven 
brave professors of the University of Goettingin. This cele- 
brated seven "in order not to appear as men who lightly play 
with oaths" declared themselves still bound to allegiance to 
the Constitution. There is in the list no name that is not 
famous in some department of German science or learning. 
They are F. C. Dahlmann, E. Albrecht (jurist), Jacob Grimm, 
Wilhelm Grimm (philologists), G. Gervinus, Hugo Ewald, 
and Wilhelm Weber (historian). 

The pro-rector and the deans of the University it is true in 
a private audience with the king immediately declared their 
disapprobation of the step of the seven professors, whereupon 
six more professors declared that while they did not sign they 
did not wish to be regarded as disapproving the action of their 
colleagues. Through a newspaper of Kassel the action of the 
professors reached the public. 

Under the pretense that the seven professors were in traitor- 
ous correspondence with France, (on the day of the protest, 
September 26, 1837, ^ Paris paper had announced that seven 
professors would refuse the oath of allegiance to the new king 
of Hannover) Ernst August promptly and illegally, in fact 
without any process of law, banished the offending professors 
on three days notice. Some of the students accompanied them 
to the Hessian boundary, but even in Hesse only Grimm, who 
was a born Hessian, was allowed to remain. The others re- 
ceived notice from the police to move immediately on. Several 
of the other states followed suit and in order to print their side 
of the case at all the offending professors had to leave Germany 
entirely and go to Basel in Switzerland — the historic land of 
refuge for all Europe. 



180 POLITICAL HISTORY Ot EDROfE. 

Many individuals, belonging to all the parties, joined in 
heartily damning the king, and Goettingen Vereins were 
opened, (the first at Leipsig) to which contributions were sent 
for the support of the professors. 

Jacob von Riesen wrote Von Rochow, the Prussian Minister 
of the Interior, detailing the incident and, what seems almost 
laughable, expected sympathy. Von Rochow tersely replied 
that: "It does not become a subject to lay the measuring rod 
of his cramped and limited intelligence on the actions of the 
head of the State." 

When Frederick William IV, came to the throne his many 
sided personality and variant traits of character made him an 
enigma to his people, the occasion of undefined hopes and form- 
less fears. Seldom has a man so gifted occupied a throne, but 
his gifts vi^ere of the character that would grace a tribune rather 
than a throne. His mind was brilliant without being con- 
structive, learned and not logical, ernestly partisan and not 
calmly judicial. Religiously, his soul was that of a devotee, 
and aesthetically, that of an artist, while his florid beauty and 
vivid enthusiastic fancies had made him the hero of many 
romantic love affairs. An idealist in philosophy, a poet in feel- 
ing, an orator in temperament, ever ready to be generous where 
he should be just, and thoroughly possessed by the paternalistic 
dogma that "a king is the father of his people." He combined 
many of these qualities that would have made him the beloved 
autocrat of a mediaeval people, but that utterly unfitted him 
to understand or appreciate the modern spirit of equal rights 
and constitutional government. Representing most of the best 
of the mediaeval ideas of government he was to come into con- 
tanct with much that was worst of the new Phoenix of Consti- 
tutionalism, which had sprung irom the ashes of revolution. 

The first acts of Frederick William fanned the hopes of the 
liberals. 

He restored Arndt, who had been suspended since 1820, to 
his professorship ; revoked the banishment of the old Turnvater 
Jahn; gave Alexander von Humbolt and the brothers Grimm 
positions in the University of Berlin ; and surounded him- 



VIOLATION OF THE CONSTITUTION IN HANOVER, ETC. 181 

self with men famous in science, learning and art, but it was 
even then significant that the majority of the politicians who 
gained his ear were men of the reaction, of the type of Has- 
senpflug. 

The people who, on account of their personal love for his 
father and the good and evil days they had endured together, 
had been content to ignore his broken promise to grant them a 
Constitution, were not inclined to extend their patience toward 
his son. 

The members of the Landtag or provincial Diet of Koenigs- 
burg, which the king called together in order that he might 
receive the allegiance of the old provinces of Prussia and Gnesen, 
signalized their coming together by passing a petition to the king 
by a vote of eighty-nine to five asking that a Constitution be 
granted to the whole land. His answer was tender and beau- 
tiful, if it had any fault at all it was that it absolutely ignored 
their request. Friederich William's ideal of his ofBce may be 
gained from the words he spoke from the tribune on the next 
day after having returned this answer. The scene was deeply 
impressive. Fifteen thousand men filled the court of the pal- 
ace where all the kings of "Prussia had been crowned. In the 
midst of a silence so solemn and profound that it seemed almost 
sacred the king rose suddenly from his throne, advanced to the 
edge of the tribune, and raising his right hand to heaven, swore 
before the face of God and before all those beloved witnesses, 
that he would be: "a just judge, a true and considerate and 
tender-hearted prince, a Christian king as his never-to-be-for- 
gotten father had been." He begged God for the blessing of 
princes which turned the hearts of m.en toward the annointed 
one and made him a man fashioned after the divine will. He 
implored God's blessing on that beloved fatherland. "With us," 
concluded in tender enthusiasm his peroration, "there is unity 
of head and members, of prince and people, glorious unity of 
effort and striving among all classes alike toward one beautiful 
goal of the general welfare in sacred loyalty and true honor. 
Thus may God's will preserve our Prussian fatherland itself, 
Germany, and the entire world, manifold and yet one, like thae 



182 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

precious ore that, although fused together from many metals, 
yet remains only the one the most precious, subjected to no other 
rust than the mellowing, beautifying touch of the centuries." 

It was the tender attitude of paternalism at its best but in it 
all no word constructive or implied of a Constitution. 

At Berlin a similar scene characterized by equal eloquence 
was enacted. 

The king was purposing to throw a sop to Cerberus by his 
plans of calling a United Landtag composed of the provincial 
Estates in their totality. Its value would be only that of a gen- 
eral convention of local parliaments but he hesitated so long with 
his plans for even this measure that a flood of pamphlet litera- 
ture was turned loose on him to urge him to action. 

The great poet, Henreich Heine, was the most satirical of 
the critics of the king. He ridiculed the bright choleric and 
autocratic temperament of the king by his little warning verse — 

"Ein koenig, soil nicht witzig sein, 
Ein koenig soil nicht hitzig sein, 
Er soil nicht allten Fritzig sein." 

and characterized the United Landtag as: "Neither flesh nor 
fish, but a foolish mixture of the extremes of the age." 

Yet again, referring to the broken promises of 1815 and 1820 
that the land woul dbe granted a Constitution, he mocked; 
"Yes, the promises of kings they are such treasures, as deep in 
the Rhine the Nibelungen hoard." 

Not that all these things were said in Berlin ; nay verily, but 
there was Switzerland, and the craft of the smuggler was 
stronger than the blue pencil of the Censor. 

The king also achieved much unpopularity over his project 
of establishing in connection Avith the Church of England a 
Protestant Bishopric in Jerusalem and over his contributions 
for finishing the Cologne Cathedral which had been building 
four hundred years and whose corner stone was formally laid 
on September 4, 1842. The occasion was celebrated as a nation- 
al holidav. 



VIOLATION OF THE CONSTITUTION IN HANOVER, ETC. 183 

The jaelding and complaisant attitude of the king toward 
the Roman church encouraged the revival of superstition and 
the multiplication of miracles at shrines. By far the most nota- 
ble of these and the most significant for church historj' was the 
exhibition by the Bishop Arnoldi of Trier of the seamless robe 
of Christ. In August, 1844, he solemnly put on exhibition this 
wonderful garment that belonged to the treasures of his church. 
Given thus its opportunity the garment did not disappoint 
his expectations. The Freifrau von Droste Vischering, a neice 
of the Archbishop, came to the shrine on crutches, but departed 
leaping and rejoicing, having discarded her crutches. There was 
no lack of the cumulative evidence of supplementary miracles 
and within a period of six weeks over a million of pilgrims 
streamed from the four corners of the compass to the old city 
on the Moselle — the tide utterly unstemmed by the demonstra- 
tion of Protestant theologians that there were some twenty or 
more of these seamless garments in the various shrines of Catho-' 
lie countries. 

Then from, the bosom of the Roman church there arose a 
protest of sufficient magnitude to splinter off a new sect from 
tlie old Comm.union and ground the "Old Catholic" church of 
Germany that within two years numbered sixty thousand com- 
municants. 

The movement was inaugurated by two suspended priests. 
The first of these, Johannes Ronge, opened the campangn by 
an open letter to Bishop Arnoldi, "the Tetzel of the nineteenth 
century," against the idolatrous rites at Trier. The other 
priest was Czerski, from the province of Posen, who discarded, 
not the dogma, but merely the constitution of the Roman church, 
especially the supremacy of the papcy. He alleged the moral 
rottenness of the clergy as the chief ground for his action. This 
faction's faithfulness to dogma speedily caused a split in the 
ranks of the Old Catholics themselves, as the followers of Ronge 
discarded the Apostles creed and took their stand on the basis 
of free criticism. Eventually the greater part of them cither 
consolidated with the free congregations of the Protestants or 
went back to the old communions although the organization 



184 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

Still drags out a nominal and precarious existence. 

Meantime the growing liberalism in theology was indirectly 
leading to tolerance. A general Synod in 1846 had declared 
the old symbols to be not binding on the conscience and had pre- 
pared a Confession of Faith that purposely avoided dogmatic 
definiteness. The king held that if it were impossible for any- 
one to reconcile the old Confession of Faith with his conscience 
it was such an one's duty, not to remain in the church and nullify 
the Confession of Faith, but to quit the church. As hitherto 
this had been forbidden by law, he promulgated, on March 30, 
1847, the Edict of Tolerance which permitted a dissenter to 
leave the church after he had made a sworn statement of his 
non-conformity before a judge. Those who thus surrendered 
their rights and privileges in the state church were permitted 
to found free congregations according to their own Confession 
of Faith. The most of the freethinking clergy refused to give 
up the loaves and fishes connected with the state institution and 
asserted that they had the right to remain in the state church 
and teach and believe what they pleased. Some of the old strict 
Lutherans remained in the consolidated church and some went 
out to enjoy their own narrow creed. Many of those who were 
disposed to minify dogmatic differences founded the Gustavus 
Adolphus Verein as a common bulwark for all protestants with- 
out regard to variations in belief against the common danger 
of the Roman church. The same end was sought without result 
by the Evangelical Conference. 

The burning question meantime was no longer the religious 
one, but the question of the Constitution. The king, against 
the protest of the Prince of Prussia, (later Emperor William I) 
declared he felt himself bound by the promises of his father 
to give some kind of a constitution to the land. He considered 
that he would be absolved from his promise when his United 
Landtag came into existence. He accordingly constituted it by 
royal patent on February 3, 1847. 

It was a curious and wonderfully constructed hybrid. It was 
to consist of a general national assem.bly to be called, without 
stated periodicity, merely at the good pleasure of the monarch. 



VIOLATION OF THE CONSTITUTION IN HANOVER, ETC. 185 

This assembly was to be composed of two houses, the House of 
Lords, and the Lower House. This latter divided into three 
classes of knights, citizens and peasants. 

The Upper House was composed of the royal princes, the no- 
bility, and several other classes. The whole assembly, composed 
of the eight provincial Diets was to meet together to vote taxes 
or loans. For other purposes it was divided as above. As far 
as legislation was concerned it had only an advisory right, and 
in internal affairs only the right of petitioning. 

The assembly itself was to be called together when circum- 
stances seemed to make it advisable, i. e. when the king wanted 
a tax or a loan. It was however privileged to elect a united 
comrnitteee which was to meet regularly every four years. 

Naturally enough the patent was followed by a spirited public 
debate as to whether it had any value and the matter was still 
a subject of heated controversy, when on the eleventh of April, 
the United Landtag met and heard the first address from the 
crown ever made by a Prussian king to any kind of a Parlia- 
ment. 

This speech shov/ed very unequivocally indeed that he had 
no intention of transferring the power of government into the 
hands of an advisory assembly He plainly told them in the 
address from the throne that he had called them together to 
represent the rights of those who had commissioned them and 
not to advocate and discuss contemporary and academic opin- 
ion^;. Not the will of majorities, but his own untrammeled 
conceptions, would be the guiding thread of his reign, and never 
would he consent to change his relationship to his people into 
a constitutional one. He concluded with the fam.ous perora- 
tion: "No written sheet of paper shall ever thrust itself like 
a second province between the Lord God in Heaven and this 
land." 

The delegates speedily discovered that they were net only 
to have no legal footing, but that those who opposed the king 
were to have no social recognition, for they were studiously 
ignored in sending out invitations to festivities at the palace. 

Utterly disgusted at the denial of any legal representative 



186 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

footing, the members refused to grant the request for a really 
necessary loan to build a railroad from Berlin to Koenigsberg, 
and the king angrily dismissed them. Apparently notihng had 
been accomplished, but wide publicity had been given to the 
struggle and the Liberals now knew that nothing less than 
revolution could gain their object. One of the delegates in this 
assembly, an ardent conservative and earnest supporter of the 
king, was Otto von Bismark. 



CHAPTER XIX. 



THE EUROPEAN STATES ON THE EVE OF THE REVOLUTION 

OF 1848. 



The decade from 1830 to 1840, had been marked by some 
extension of national secret political societies with internation 
connections whose guiding spirit was the Italian, Guiseppe 
Mazzini. These societies such as the "Young Italy," the 
"Young France," the "Young Germany," were usually on the 
same model. Their members were driven from the various 
countries to Switzerland and finally from there also, so that 
London became the solitary place of refuge for their scattered 
units. 

The character of the revolutionary propaganda of the follow- 
ing period was markedly different. In Germany at large the 
openly confessed desire of France to encroach still farther on the 
Rhine territory had awakened a national feeling not only in 
the several states but in the country at large. Although the 
change was gradual, the year 1840 may perhaps be regarded as 
the turning point when the Cosmopolitan Liberalism was super- 
seded by the National Liberalism. 

German national pride was stimulated by the publication of 
such songs as the Watch on the Rhine by Max Sneckenburger, 
(Thirty years later this became the national hymn of the whole 
land), and Hergweh's Rhine Song, whose refrain even in trans- 
lation is not without its appeal: 

Where such a fire still brightly glov\'s 
And such a wine with flames still flows 

There we'll remain eternally and be exiled, no never — 
Hurrah, Hurrah the Rhine, 
And were it only for its wine 

The Rhine were Deusch forever. 

The anti-French feeling was still further stimulated by 
Nicholas Becker's "Sie sollen ihn nicht haben, den freien deut- 
schen Rhein, bis seine Flut begraben des letzten Manns Gc- 



188 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROfE. 

bem." 

In many states there was a relaxation of the reaction and a 
demand on the part of the radicals for the erasure from the 
statute books of the several states of the persecuting laws of 
18.19, 1834. and 1837- 

Bavaria almost anticipated France in its revolution. For a 
long time the land had been under the control of the Catholics. 
The Jesuits with their genius for statecraft filled the leading 
places in the ministry, but the ministry had finally gone so far 
with the king that the bow was on the point of breaking and 
they must soon give up the reins of government. The ques- 
tion was, how to do it gracefully. The opportunity was offered 
them by the king's infatuation for Lola Montez, a dancer of 
Scottish birth, who had left a lurid trail through all Europe and 
America. In Paris she had once taken off her shoe and thrown 
it at the men who refused to applaud her. She had finally set- 
tled at Munich, where she had gained great favor with the 
susceptible king who desired to elevate her to the nobility by 
conferring the title of Countess of Lansfeld. This outraged the 
sentim.ent of his people. The papers, especially the Catholic, 
came out with tirades against this stranger who had captured 
the heart of the king. The Ministrj^ with Abel at its head, not 
only refused the desire of the king to make her a Countess, but 
read him a moral lecture and resigned. Ludwig announced 
the event to the dancer with great joy, "I have dismissed all my 
ministry. The Jesuit regime has ceased in Bavaria." The first 
act of the new, Protestant-Liberal ministry was to sign the 
desired patent of nobility for the dancer, but as they also desired 
to have as little to do with her as possible they were soon dis- 
missed and new ministries succeeded one another rapidly. Lola 
wore her new honors very openly and appeared often in public 
with her infainous bodyguard, the "Allemania." 

All Bavaria was said to be divided into two parties, the Ultrar 
Montaines or Clerical-Conservatives and the Lola-Montaines, 
or Protestant-Liberal party who had been forced into an invol- 
untary advocacy of the dancer's cause in order to gain influence 
wiih the king. Ludvvig contended, with some shov*^ of reason, 



LUROPEAN STATES ON EVE OF REVOLUTION OF 1848. 189 

that If the countess' name had been Loyola Montez, instead of 
Lola Montez, no fuss would have been made. Be that as it 
may, the trouble grew. The students attacked her bodyguard. 
The king retaliated by closing the University. The citizens 
declared for the students. The king threatened force but was 
afraid to use it. 

The French Revolution coming on, gave success to the re- 
form movement. The University was reopened and Lola was 
given notice to quit the Capital at a day's notice. After her 
departure the crowd rushed to her deserted villa and began to 
sack it, when the king appeared in their midst and said in a 
loud voice, "Spare my property!" All ceased, bared their 
heads, and joined in the song: "Hail to our king! All hail!" 
The people were not rebels at heart, but demanded only reform. 
The mistake oi the king, who shortly thereafter became 
afraid and called on the military to protect him, forced the 
people into rebellion. They succeeded in forcing the king to 
call an assembly of the Estates and granting the desired further 
concessions in the direction of Liberalism. The chief of these 
was ministerial responsibility to the people. The people were 
now appeased, but the king feared that the next step would be 
an examination into the finances of state. Moreover his heart 
yearned to see Lola, and so he decided on the abdication of 
the throne. He took leave of his people with many tender 
and beautiful expressions of paternal affection. He had been of 
only such value to Munich as the Medicii were to Florence — 
a great patron of art, achitecture, science, and music. His 
are collections have made Munich one of the art centres of 
Europe. Many also thought kindly of him on account of his 
friendship to Greece. 

From 1830 to 1845, the Schleswig-Holstein complications 
loomed ever larger and larger on the horizon. The two 
duchies had been long united with each other, and for a shorter 
period with Denmark, by personal union, but the order of suc- 
cession in the three countries was different. In Denmark, either 
sex could succeed ; in Kolstein, the Salic law prevailed and only 
masculine heirs could inherit the throne; while in Schleswig it 



190 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

was a matter of dispute whether the Salic law was in force or 
not. In the near future the question would be put to the test. 

Frederick VI, who died in 1839, left the throne to his only 
son, Christian VIII. Christian had also one and only son who 
would succeed him as Frederick VIII. But this son was child- 
less, and with his death the personal union would be of necessity 
dissolved and the countries be either separated in government 
or united by some new bond and agreement. The situation 
produced at least four distinct parties. Those who desired all 
the countries to belong to Denmark; those who desired to see 
both taken away at the death of Frederick VII; those who 
wanted to release Holstein and leave Schleswig to Denmark; 
and those who wished to allow Denm.ark only a part of Schles- 
wig. The native provinces of the lands especially the house of 
Augustenburg also had claims to the duchies, while Prussia and 
the German Bund as well as various German states claimed 
rights with more or less good title and degree of assurance. All 
parties carried on a heated discussion in favor of their respect- 
ive claims. 

In October, 1844, the King of Denmark declared that the 
Salic law did not hold in Schleswig. The result vi^as that a pro- 
test and petition was sent to the king within the month claim- 
ing, that, for both Schleswig and Holstein the Salic law was in 
force, and containing the three articles of the confession of faith 
of the German thinking Schleswig-Holsteiners. They were as 
follows : 

I. The Duchies are independent States. 2. They inherit 
only in the male line. 3. They are forever inseparably united. 
Of course this was merely the assertion of a partisan claim and 
the King of Denmark speedily answered it by an open letter of 
date of July 8, 1846, based on an investigation made by a Com- 
mission appointed for that purpose. 

The letter bluntly stated that all of Schleswig and all of 
Holstein with the possible exception of a few counties had the 
same order of succession as Denmark. This enraged the Ger- 
m.ans as it put in question even the unity of Holstein. A mon- 
ster public assembly met on the twentieth of July and declared 



EUROPEAN STATES ON EVE OF REVOLUTION OF 1848. 191 

the three points of the previous petition to be the law of the 
land. The Holstein Estates also protested and appealed to the 
Bundestag. 

The Bundestag was too diplomatic to make a decision. The 
Danish Government now put down by force all demonstrations 
in the duchies, many if not most of whose inhabitants were really 
in favor of continued Danish supremacy. Sufficient opposition 
remained to rnake the state of affairs in the duchies practically 
one of war during the year 1847. The bad matter was made 
worse, when, on January 20, 1848, Christian VIII died, and 
only the life of one man, the childless successor, Frederick VII, 
intervened before the final solution of the question must be made. 

However, the Germans were not alone in coming to a new 
sense of national unity and pride. The Poles, the Bohemians, 
the Illyrians, the Magyars, the Italians, and the Swiss were 
also experiencing national revivals. 

In 1846 the free city of Krakau, the last remnant of Poland 
that enjoyed even a nominal independence, became the centre 
of an attempted revolution. Mieroslawski was the chief pa- 
triot, or conspirator, according to the point of view. The at- 
tempt was foredoomed to failure. Prussia, Austria, and Russia 
speedily came to an understanding, and by the i6th of Novem- 
ber, 1846, Krakau was finally annexed to Austria, and Poland 
had disappeared from the map. 

During the period Bohem.ia was enjoying a literary rennais- 
?ance stimulated by the discover}' of ancient Bohemian hero 
songs, — the so-called Koeniginhofer manuscript, discovered by 
Hanka. With this renaissance the dream of Pan-Slavonic 
supremacy asserted its spell. Tscheckish patriotism required 
that one should read only Bohemian books, and that only the 
national books and plays should be popular. 

In Hungary a similar feeling grew so strong that in January, 
1844, the Magyar succeeded the Latin as the official speech of 
the Hungarian parliament meeting and the imposing figure of 
Louis Kossuth caught the public eye even far beyond his native 
land. At home he was known through his newspaper, the 
"Pesto Hirlap," and through an eloquence so overpowering 



1S2 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

that, it Is said that, when he spoke and as long as he spoke, his 
hearers forgot all the rest of the world and recognized only him 
as their leader and could swear by nothing higher than his 
word. 

In Austria proper events still stagnated. The death of the 
Emperor Francis in 1835 was almost meaningless for both 
European and German history. Ferdinand, the new incumbent 
of the throne, was bodily sick and mentally weak, and Metter- 
nich retained his power unimpaired.. 

In Italy the time of the reaction had been survived and the 
people were again ready to hear the voice of the charmer, calling 
to revolution. In Sardinia, Karl-Albert, although educated in 
the principles of the Carbonari, did not satisfy this society. He 
vividly characterized his course as one midway between the dirk 
of the Carbonari and the chocolate of the Jesuits. 

Under Gregory XVI, the Church states were still in sad con- 
dition. They are described as having peace without rest, sleep 
without refreshing, a crown without a government. Even 
there, however, Gioberti's "Primacy of Italy" and Cassar 
Balbos' "Italy's Hopes" showed the new national spirit. 

This seed corn of nationality needed only to be breathed on 
by a generous spirit of liberalism in order to make it fructify. 

Thus matters stood when on the first of June, 1846, Gregory 
XVI, died. His successor was Mastai Ferretti, the fift}''-four 
year old bishop of Imolo, who new began as Pio Nono the long- 
est pontificate the papacy has known. Here the man and the 
hour seemed for once to have met. This man the most liberal 
in the ranks of Italian Catholics. An ardent reader of Balbo and 
Gioberti, he had carried their writings with him to the conclave 
in order to recommend them to the newly elected pope whoever 
he might be, and lo it was he himself! At first he seemed even 
in the chair of St. Peter to be true to his liberalism. A series 
or necessary but astounding reforms were carried out. Exiles 
were recalled, improvements were inaugurated. The Liberals 
rose everywhere to greet him as the apostle of the new liberal 
Millennium. Metternich became so alarmed that he increased 
the garrison at the fortress of Ferrara to 800 men and and was 



EUROPEAN STATES ON EVE OF REVOLUTION OF 1848. 193 

almost ready to march against the Pope, while both England 
and France stood ready to support him in his liberalism. The 
world seemed about to witness the strange spectacle of demo- 
cratic ideals represented by a Pope. 

But Pio Nono's ideas of liberalism were evolutionary rather 
than revolutionary in character, and the iron traditions of the 
Papacy were sure to enter into the soul of even the most liberal 
clericals. Moreover, the historical attitude of the incumbent 
of the Chair of Peter must sooner or later have crushed out the 
democratic ideals even if they were not uprooted or jerked out 
by the shock of approaching revolution. "No man serve two 
masters," and surely not when the two are a heirarchy and a 
democracy. 

But while Pio's liberal ideas lasted they were to lead in the 
direction of ultimate Italian unity. Not the least important of 
these new measures was the customs agreement between the 
Pope, Tuscany, and Piedmont, which took effect november 3, 
1847, and prepared the way for an Italian "Customs Union.' 
Tuscany and Piedmont also imitated the liberal measures of 
the Pope. Karl Albert of Sardinia not only solemnly announced 
a new epoch of reforms, but expressed an open secret in private 
letters by declaring his longing for the time to come when he 
and his sons might m.ount horse and call Italy to war for inde- 
pendence. 

Austria was not ignorant of these strange developments. She 
did not content herself with trying to undermine the influence 
of the Pope, but hastened to form an alliance with the duchies 
on the Po. By the beginning of February, by taking advantage 
of complications in the succession to the duchies, and of their 
entagled territorial claims, she had formed an alliance with the 
Duke of Modena and Parma, v/hich put their provinces within 
Austria's lines, and gave Metternich the right, as soon as dan- 
ger threatened from internal or external foes, to let the Aus- 
trian troops enter their territories. This formed a formidable 
anti-national alliance. The danger could be made still greater 
by the entry into the agreement of the King of Naples, an event 
which might happen at any moment. 



194 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

More than any other Italian prince, Ferdinand II, of Naples, 
was in need of outside assistance. Sicily, encouraged by Eng- 
land, was in rebellion since the birthday of the king on January 
12, 1847. Beginning at Palermo the population had in street 
fights, forced the surrender of the citadel. By January 27, 
they had driven away the Neapolitan fleet and governor. Almost 
the entire island fell at once into their possession. Before the 
end of January a provisional government was in power with 
the re-established Constitution of 18 12. Ferdinand II, vainly 
sought to stem the tide by granting on January 29, a Constitu- 
tion for all his lands. This step was taken none too soon, for 
Naples threatened to follow Sicily's example. This conces- 
sion held Naples back, but Sicily continued the armed rebellion. 

Here also France was being anticipated. Well might the 
monarchs of Europe regard Liberalism as a constitutional sore, 
for its rebellions and revolutions might be healed at one place 
only to break out at another and its symptoms stifled for a time 
only to break forth at last with greater intensity. 

In England the reform movement since its successes of 1832 
was permeating the entire land with its spirit. By 1846 Robert 
Peel for all his concessions and his bowing before the storm was 
finally obliged to yield to the more liberal policies of Lord 
Palmerston. Palmerston was the friend of liberal ideas every- 
where and did not hesitate to unseal the cave of the wind^ and 
unleash Boreas and his brethren to tug at every reactionary 
throne of Europe. 

The "entente cordiale that had successfully resisted the shock 
of outraged public opinion in France, over England's demanded 
right of search in alleged opposition to the slave trade, and of 
the equally outraged sentiment in England over France's en- 
croachments in Australia and her treatment of the English 
Consul Pritchard in the Society islands, was destined to perish 
at last through Louis Phillippe's double-dealing in the matter 
of the Spanish marriage. 

The question at issue was as to who should be husband and 
Prince Consort of the young Queen Isabella of Spain. 

In 1845, on the occasion of a visit made by Queen Victoria, 



EUROPEAN STATES ON EVE OF REVOLUTION OF 1848. 195 

accompanied by the foreign minister, Lord Aberdeen, to the 
king and queen of France at Eu, Louis Phillippe and Guizot 
had promised to deny themselves the right to ask for the hand 
of the young queen for Louis Phlllippe's son, the duke of Mont- 
pensier. This concession was reluctably made, on condition 
that England would not use Its influence to secure the young 
queen as a wife for Prince Leopold of Coburg, who was also 
the candidate favored by Isabella's mother, Maria Christina. 
England further consented that Montpensier might marry 
Luise, the younger sister of Isabella, as soon as the marriage of 
the young queen had been blessed with issue. France now 
favored the candidacy of the Bourbon cousin of the queen, 
Francisco, duke of Cadiz, who was a weakling in body and 
almost an idiot in mind, while England worked for his brother, 
Don Enrique, whom nature had more generously favored both 
In mind and person. 

The disturbing factor proved to be Maria Christina, who 
did not hold herself, of course, bound by England's agreement, 
and who equally of course, had the greatest influence on the 
mind of her youthful daughter. She now offered Isabella's hand 
to Prince Leopold, greatly to England's surprise and disgust. 
The English cabinet at once disclaimed responsibility and the 
Foreign office expressed its regret in an immediate notification 
to France. Guizot did not receive the notification in the same 
spirit, but declaimed so vehemently against this as to arouse a 
conviction in the mind of Palmerston (who had just came into 
office) that the whole affair was a plot of Guizot and Louis 
Phillippe to get England in a trap. 

The circumstances seemed to confirm this conviction. For 
eight weeks previously on July 5, the French ambassador had 
been instructed to try to bring about a simultaneous betrothal 
of Isabella to Francisco and of Luise to Montpensier. Fran- 
cisco's mental and physical condition made it hardly probable 
that he would have heirs, in which case Montpensier and Luise 
or their heirs would succeed. On the day before England's note 
of information reached the French court, the French Ambassa- 
dor In Madrid had so successfullv followed instructions that he 



1S6 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

had already brought about (August 28, 1846,) the double 
betrothal. Report said that the consent of Isabella to the match 
had been wrune from her after a night of drunken orgies, par- 
ticipated in by herself, her mother, the French Ambassador and 
several others of the initiated. 

The underhanded intrigue of this method received the con- 
jer^nation even of Joinville, Louis Phillippe's son, and Louis 
umself did not dare announce the betrothals to Queen Victoria, 
although he was her constant correspondent, but imposed upon 
his wife the unpleasant task. The result of this kind of diplo- 
macy was of cours^ the shattering of the entente cordiale and 
Louis Phillippe had estranged England exactly in the hour when 
he was most to need a friend. 

The different cantons of Switzerland were really united in 
nothing n^ore than a loosely bound league of states. The ter- 
ritoral contiguity was offset by the physical barriers of the Alps 
and by the racial, lingual and religious differences. The politi- 
cal and religious differences in so far coincided that the Catholic 
religion and the conservative individualistic states rights views 
were represented by one party. The protestant faith, liberal 
viev/s and the desire to strengthen the federal bond and the 
pov/ers of the general government characterized the other. 

The course of events from 1835 to 1846 was rather in favor 
of the Clerical-Conservatives than of the Protestant-Liberals. 

The Catholic party came into power in Zurich in 1839, O'^ 
a question of faith. The liberal government had installed as 
professor in the University there, David Strauss, whose life of 
Jesus may almost be said to have inaugurated the era of modern 
German rationalism. Not only the Catholics, but the conserva- 
tive and orthodox Protestants were deeply chagrined at this 
appointm.ent, especially as Strauss had lost his place at the Uni- 
versity on account of this book. Swiss evangelical orthodoxy 
did not care to swallow what had proved too strong for the 
German stomach. 

But not in Zurich alone did the ultramontane party gain 
strength. In the Cantons of Freiburg, Uri, Zug and others it 
had always had a decided majority and in the years from 1834 



EUROPEAN STATES ON EVE OF REVOLUTION OF 1848. 197 

on, it had recaptured Wallis and Schwyz. Lucerne which had 
been doubtful was also recaptured, and despite the presence of a 
large and vehement Protestant party, swept into the ranks of 
Catholic activit)^ 

The Liberals of the Canton Aargau had, in 1841, altered the 
Constitution so as to abolish the monasteries and to confiscate 
their property. The ultromontanes in retaliation followed the 
example of Schwyz Freiburg and Wallis and turned over all 
public instruction to the Jesuits. The result was that the Liber- 
al party led by Dr. Steiger attempted in December, 1844, to 
overpower the guard at the arsenal and seize the reins of the 
government. The attempt failed and Steiger and others were 
forced to flee. Tvv^elve hundred of them v.-ent into exile in a sin- 
gle night. Public sentim.ent was now so divided and so bitter 
that a civil war was inevitable. In the latter part of March, 
1845, Steiger and other Liberal leaders invaded the territory of 
Zurich at the head of free coiTipanies. They were defeated and 
Steiger was captured and condemned to death, but escaped by 
guile from his prison. 

All of the canton? v/ere involved in the difficulty when fol- 
lowing the cu~tom Oi rotation i.i the presidency of the Federa- 
tion, the time came for the Protestant canton Bern to furnish 
a chairman. It appointed to this office General Ochsenbein, 
Vv'ho had coiv^' '~arrcd oT'I'- c' tl-e free rr;rr,panie;? V\'hicli invaded 
Zurich. Zurich thereupon promptly renewed the Sarner Alli- 
ance and formed a new Confederation with the strictly Catholic 
Cantons of Schyz, Zug, Uri, Unterwalden, Freiburg and iWal- 
lis. This alliance was given by the old Bund the name of a 
Sonder-Bund or Secession-Confederation. A mediating party 
composed of the cantons of Geneva, St. Gall, Basel-Stadt and 
Neuenburg attempted to bring about a reconciliation but in vain 
and the Pvadical-Liberals scon captured Geneva and St. Gall, 
thereby giving the Liberal party an overwhelming majority in 
the old Bund or Eidgenossenshaft (Oath-Bound-Confederacy). 

The Bund now brought on the impending civil war by two 
measures: The first declared the Sonderbund to be void as 
an attempted secession and demanded its immediate dissolution. 



198 FOLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROFE. 

As a state within a state it could not be permitted. The 
second measure adopted on September 3, 1847, was a decision 
that the Jesuits should be expelled from all Switzerland. The 
Sonder-Bund and the Canton Nuenberg, (which by the treaty 
of Vienna acknowledged Frederick William IV, of Prussia^ as 
its sovereign and therefore feared the difficulties with Prussia 
which any change might bring about) refused to assent to or 
to carry out either of these measures. The only compromise the 
Sonder-Bund would make was to agree to dissolve, if the Jesuit 
question as well as that of the monasteries in Aargau were sub- 
mitted to the Pope as arbiter. To such a proposition of course 
the Protestant cantons of the Bund could not agree. 

Nothing but the intervention of the great powers could now 
prevent civil war, but the great powers could not agree among 
themselves. Russia was indifferent. England was ardently and 
decisively for the Liberals. Guizot, although a Protestant, was 
in favor of the Sonder-Bund and allowed the rebellious cantons 
to equip themselves with weapons and munitions from France. 
But Guizot was not willing to go as far as Metternich, who 
had formulated a program that all the great powers should 
recall their ambassadors from Switzerland ; try to intimidate 
the Liberals by a threatening declaration ; and finally, if neces- 
sary, take up weapons for the Secessionists. None of the na- 
tions, not even France, would agree to this program and so the 
Swiss troubles were settled by the Swiss themselves and the 
arbitrament of the sword, as events followed too rapidly to 
allow Austria to intervene alone even if her fear of England 
had permitted it. 

In November 4, 1847, the representatives of the Catholic 
cantons of the Sonder-Bund withdrew from the Bund, which 
at once declared war and sent an army of thirty thousand men 
under General Dufour to subdue the rebellious cantons. He 
accomplished this within one month's time, at a cost of only 
378 cannon shots, in an almost bloodless war. Radical-Liberal 
governments Avere installed in the conquered cantons. The 
government in Lucerne was headed by Dr. Steiger. 

It would have been difficult for Metternich alone under any 



EUROPEAN STATES ON EVE OF REVOLUTION OF 1848. 199 

circumstances to attempt to make history retroactive and undo 
a thing so thoroughly accomplished, especially as the House of 
Hapsburg had been uniformly unsuccessful in its contests with 
Switzerland. But Austria was not to be permitted to make 
the attempt. The intervention of the new series of revolutions 
of 1848 gave all the powers, except those favoring the Liberals, 
enough to do at home and made interference impossible. 

During the year 1848 Switzerland was thoroughly trans- 
formed from a Staatenbund or Confederacy of sovereign can- 
tons into a Bundesstaat, or Federal State. The old Parlia- 
ment of the representatives of the various cantons which had 
met in rotation in Bern, Lucerne, and Zurich gave place to a 
Bund Assembly, or Parliament, consisting of two chambers ; the 
Estates Council, consisting of forty-four representatives sent 
by the states as such, and the National Council, consisting of 
representatives of Switzerland at large, elected in proportion 
to the number of the population. 

The system corresponded closely to the Senate and House of 
Representatives of the United States. Bern was to be the sole 
capital and the executive power was committed to the hands 
of a Bund-Council elected by the Parliament and composed of 
seven members, with a three-years term of office. 

A federal court and national military, post, and coinage sys- 
tems were adopted. Neuenberg renounced her allegiance to 
Frederick William IV, and entered the new federation un- 
hampered and the times of revolution forced the Prussian king 
to acquiesce although with many and loud threats. 

Thus Switerland more than Sicily or any other country 
of Europe anticipated the French revolution and exercised a 
great and significant influence on the turn of affairs. From 
many quarters of Europe the sparks were flying toward France, 
where they would find the powdercasks prepared and exposed 
arid the explosions there would inaugurate a new series of revo- 
lutions and break ground for foundation laying in the recon- 
struction of some of the greater states of Europe. 



CHAPTER XX. 

FRANCE AND THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION THE SOCIALIST 

REBELLION — ^RISE OF NAPOLEON III. 



The fall of the Dey of Algiers gave the French only his 
capital. Two of his Beys at first it is true acknowledged the 
French sovereignty, but the Bey of Constantine coolly and impu- 
dently refused to do so. The French standing was further en- 
dangered by the fall of the Bourbon dynasty, and the recall 
to France of many of the troops and officers, but the crisis was 
past ere the Algerians had perceived their opportunity and the 
greatest danger the French had to confront was from the semi- 
Bey semi-bandit Abd-el-Kader, whose warlike ability quite 
overshadowed that of Achmet Bey of Constantine, although the 
latter had dangerous alliances and connections wnth the Bey of 
Tunis. A temporary treaty with Abd-el-Kader gave the French 
opportunity to rid themselves of their less formidable opponent. 
This done, on October 13, 1837, the French under General 
Valee and Lientenant Colonel Lamoriciere stormed by a bloody 
assualt and sacked the city and fortress of Constantine. 

The peace was of short duration. Within two years Abd-el- 
Kader was again on the war path and carried his guerrilla 
forays clear up to the walls of Algiers. Valee's inability to 
conquer him- withered the laurels which he had gained before 
the rocky cliffs of Constantine and he was replaced by General 
Bugeaud, who succeeded in driving the bandit over the frontier 
of Morocco. The most brilliant achievement of the campaign 
was that of the Duke of Aumale, who in May, 1843, captured 
the "Smalah" — the trveling court and headquarters — oi Abd-el- 
Kader, together with his supplies, his baggage, and his wives. 
Orleans and Nemours as well as Aumale had taken part in a 
number of African campaigns and Aumale's feat covered the 
family of the reigning sovereign with the coveted military glory 
so dear to the heart of the French. 

Abd-el-Kader's habit of crossing the Moroccan fron- 
tier to escape the French led to war with that country — 
a proceeding which as it meant the v/idening of the French 



FRANCE AND THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION, ETC. 201 

sphere in influence in north Africa was viewed by the 
English government with alarm, England's representa- 
tive in Tangier, Drummond Bey, forced the Emperor Abder- 
rahman to promise satisfaction to all the French demands, but 
the promise came too late to prevent Bugeaud's victory over the 
Moroccans at the river Isly, which won the French commander 
the rank and title of duke. The bombardment by Joinville's 
fleet of the fortresses of Tangier and Magador, both of which 
were shot to pieces, also anticipated this promise. 

Both of these events occurred in August, 1844, and in Sep- 
tember of the same year peace was concluded and Morocco 
agreed to surrender Abd-el-Kader to the French. This promise 
was easier made than kept as Abd-el-Kader rather than be sur- 
rendered undertook with the aid of a revolutionary party in 
Morocco to drive out Abderrahman himself and came very 
near succeeding. The civil war lasted until 1847, when Abd-el- 
Kader was forced back over the border into French Algiers once 
more and was torced to surrender to General Lamoriciere, who, 
together with the Duke of Aumale, promised that he would be 
banished to Egypt or Syria and set free. This promise Louis 
Phillippe positively refused to fulfill, but ordered him brought 
to France, where he was imprisoned until 1852 when he was 
banished to Asia Minor. 

With the defeat of Abd-el-Kader the French possession of 
Algiers was assured but it proved a constant disappointment. 
The French citizens and peasants refused to emigrate and colo- 
nize the new possession, and the climate especially in the inte- 
rior made the territory there of little value save for the caravans 
of the wandering Arab. In one way, and in one alone, it 
proved a valuable acquisition. It made a fine school for the 
training of officers and soldiers. All the French military heroes 
of the next generation or two received their training and got 
their first taste of glory in Algiers. Some of them in fighting 
with barbarians succumbed to barbarian ideas of warfare, Pelis- 
sier, for example, who in 1845, herded 800 Arabs in the cave 
of Darah and emulating the example of Ibrahim in the Greek 
war, filled the entrance with fuel and suffocated them all with 



202 POLITICAL RISTO&Y Of EUROPE. 

fire and smoke. 

One of the greatest supports to the throne of Louis PhilHppe 
was the popularity of his oldest son, the Duke of Orleans. This 
popularity was in marked contrast to the unpopularity and 
almost hatred with which the French regarded the second son, 
the Duke of Nemours, the hero of the Spanish marriage consir- 
acy. Orleans was married to the Protestant Princess Helene, of 
Mecklenburg, and was poular at the Courts of both Berlin and 
Vienna. The son born to this union, the Count of Paris, was 
only four years old when, by a lamentable accident, his father 
was killed. While journeying from Paris to Neuilly in a car- 
riage the horses became frightened and ran away, the Duke of 
Orleans attempted to leap from the carriage but his foot slipped 
or became entangled (some say that he had one or two glasses 
of wine more than was good for him) and he struck the ground 
head downward and after several hours of insensibility died. 
In the case of Louis Phillippe's death the heir to the throne 
would be the baby Count of Paris, but the regent would be the 
unpopular Nemours who might possibly become some day King 
of Spain. 

There was precedent for making the mother of the heir to 
the throne, regent, but the mother was a German, a Protestant, 
and a woman. Her chances to be regent were injured still 
more by the fact that her advocates in the Chamber of Deputies 
belonged to the opposition led by Laraartine. "Lamartine," 
said she: "has to be sure spoken for me, but he has spoken against 
the government of the king." The unpopularity of Nemours 
and the advanced age of Louis Phillippe encouraged the Legi- 
timusts to bring forward their Bourbon candidate to the throne, 
the Count of Chambord, t^venty-three years old at this time and 
as pretender called by his adherents Henry V. French Deputies 
even crossed the Channel to proclaim in London their alle- 
giance to him. 

Since 1842 the Republicans led by Ledru RolHn and aided 
by Lamartine, who was anything in order to be against the 
Government, had renewed their activity by voicing the poular 
demand for m.anhood suffrage. At this time only a half a 



FRANCE AND THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION, ETC. 203 

million men in France were eligible to vote. The dependent 
policy of the Foreign office under Guizot, who was believed to 
be led b}^ Metternich, was the subject of continuel criticism 
from all parties. Lamertine increased the dissatisfaction by 
his epigram, "France is bored," which he changed after a 
while into "France is sad" — "La France s'ennuie, la France 
s'attriste." The two epigrams became watchwords for the par- 
ties of the malcontents. 

In the meantime the Government, by offices, dignities, and 
cold cash, had corrupted the chambers and the courts to a point 
where it smelled to heaven and the guilty parties hardly took 
pains to deny their guilt. The state of affairs is only to be 
compared to Walpole's control of his Whig Parliament under 
the first two Georges of England. The condition might well 
be described as bribery and corruption, tempered by suicide and 
bayed at by Socialism. Socialism had found a voice and al- 
though manifold in its divisions and manifestations it had one 
aim so far as the necessary preliminary destructive work was 
concerned. The part it is to play in the Revolution that already 
stands upon the threshold w^ill justify a few words about its 
leaders and principles. The exponents of the principal types of 
Socialism v/ere Cabet, Bounarotti, Fourier, St. Simon, and 
Proudhon. 

Etienne Cabet, the son of an artisan, was born in 1788 in 
Dijon and moved to Paris in 18 18, where he did a small legal 
business as advocate. Ke was a mem.ber of the Republican 
party and of the Carbonari and attained notoriety of a secondarj'- 
grade in the July revolution. Feeling that this revolution had 
been thwarted by the accession of Louis Phillippe, he had, as 
a newspaper man, so relentlessly fought the July kingdom that 
he was in 1834 accused of lese majestej although at the time a 
member of Parliament. He fled to England, where he rem.ained 
until 1839, ai^d where under the influence of More's Utopia, 
he became a Communist. In 1842 he published in Paris a book 
modelled to a certain extent on More entitled "Voyage en 
Icarie." At the time of the February revolution he was ar- 
dently en^-A^ed on his plans to carry out his communistic ideas 



204 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

in Texas. The atempt which he really made there the same 
year, 1848, proved a complete failure. The next year he re- 
peated the attempt in the Mormon State, Nauvoo, in Illinois. 
For a while the plan proved somewhat of a success. From there 
he revisited Paris and reversed a verdict secured against him 
in the courts for contumacy and then returned to his colony 
in America. Here difficulties soon broke out, and finally he and 
about 180 of his followers were banished from his own colony. 
He left Nauvoo on November i, 1856, broken-hearted and died 
in St. Louis within a week's time. 

Marie Charles Francois Fourier, the son of a merchant, born 
in 1772, in Besancon, spent the most of his life as a tradesman's 
assistant, but hated trade and commerce as the chief sources of 
poverty. He called trade "the noble craft of the liar" and de- 
sired to found a system of society that would do away with it 
altogether. He discarded Christianity and claimed artificial- 
ities had caused the miseries of mankind and desired to reform 
men by reverting to the harmonies that would ensue from fol- 
lowing the natural impulses. He made the harmony of the 
passions the foundation of labor. His plan was to unite men in 
groups of 1,500 to 1,800 persons who should have a common 
dwelling place called Phalansterium ; the group itself was called 
a Phalanx. The dwellers in each Phalansterium were to work 
in common, each doing the thing that pleased him best and were 
to enjoy at least a partial community of all goods. He thought 
that if he could found only one of these Phalanxes the power 
of its example would force society to abandon the old forms 
and ruts and imitate his plans. He died in 1837 i" Paris. The 
attempt that was later m.ade in America to carry out his plans 
failed utterly. 

The most brilliant of these writers was Proudhon. His chief 
service was in showing, by the most incontrovertable logic, the 
folly of the plans proposed by other socialists, although without 
being able to suggest a better one himself. He gave to Socialism 
one of its most potent and popular axioms. "Property owner- 
ship is theft." Chronologically perhaps the first of these theo- 
rists was Count St. Simon, whose dialectic "Noveau Christian- 



FRANCE AND THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION, ETC. 205 

isme" appeared in Paris in 1825. He sought to show that as 
labor created all property and wealth, tradespeople, factory- 
hands, peasants or farmers ought to have the controlling influ- 
ence in society and government when as a matter of fact they 
were allowed no voice in it whatever. He desired to put into 
operation the divine principle in Christianity that men should 
live together like brothers. He claimed that the present Chris- 
tianity had regard only to the spiritual needs of men and the 
present state regard only to the temporal or fleshly interests and 
he wanted to found, a new Christianity and a new state that 
should equally regard both. He numbered among his follow- 
ers such prominent Political Economists as Michel Chevalier 
ard Carnot. Two of his disciples Hazard and Enfantin 
carried his theories further and attempted to put them in prac- 
tical application. They founded what they called "close fami- 
lies" which were to have everything in common and these two 
were to act as fam.ily fathers, but when Enfantin tried to add 
to the community of goods, community of wives, it caused a 
breach with Bazard and the state stepped in and broke up the 
organization. 

Louis Blanc sugwsted a practical plan for private property 
to pass gradually into the hand of the state. It was that while 
inheritance should still be permitted in a direct line, that is 
from parents to children, collateral inheritance should not be 
permitted, but where there were no heirs in a direct line the 
State should inherit. This would of course bring about in 
time community ownership. The emancipation of labor from 
private ownership has since then been inscribed on the banners 
of Socialism and his teaching that the principle of association is 
to supplant the law of selfishness or individualism has become 
one of their cardinal doctrines. 

The Italian Hounarotti had been the prophet of Socialism in 
the first decade of the monarchy. In the last decade its pro- 
phet was Louis Blanc. Ecunarctti, who had been a member of 
Babeuf's conspiracy against the Directory in 1796, fled from 
Paris and did not return until after the July revolution. Flis 
n^ptliod of making propaganda was the typical Italian one of se- 



206 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

cret societies. The refugees from all countries after having been 
instructed in Socialistic rites and doctrines were sent back as 
apostles to their native lands. Louis Blanc, like Proudhon, 
denied that an}^ relationship existed betvv^een his system and 
Communism. Personal property and the marriage relation were 
to be held sacred but the working classes were to be given the 
balance of power in politics. Labor was to be organized and 
do productive work on capital owned by the State and loaned 
without interest from its fund of inheritance from those who 
died childless. The profit was to be divided not according to 
ability or service rendered, but according to the laborer's meas- 
ure of necessity. The idea of state manufacturies or workshops 
and above all, the "Organization of Labor" is Louis Blanc's con- 
tribution to the Socialistic creed. All Socialists and Social Demo- 
crats had in common with each other and with all the opposition 
parties as their first and immediate goals, the overthrow of 
the monarchy, the establishment of the republic and the grant- 
ing of the suffrage to all male citizens. 

The franchise was not only closely limited, but badly distrib- 
uted. Sometimes a group of 25,000 inhabitants would have the 
same privilege of sending representatives as one of 150,000. 
Over 200 civil officials, holding office under the government 
had seats in Parliament. Suported by these hirelings the gov- 
ernment believed it could fully disregard all signs of dissatis- 
faction, but the growing discontent found a peculiar channel 
of expression. At a great reform banquet in the Chateau rouge 
(red Chateau) near Paris. At this banquet it was determined 
to inaugurate a series of banquets where all the necessafy re- 
forms should be discussed. Duchatel, Minister of the Interior, 
declared that he would prevent all such banquets on the 
strength of a statute of 1790. The validity of this law was in 
dispute even if the flight of time had not nullified it by limita- 
tion and the several changes in the form of government that 
had occurred. The opposition thereupon determined to hold 
such a banquet in Paris itself as a dare to the government, to 
prevent or dissolve it by force. February 22, 1848, was set 
as the date. 



FRANCE AND THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION, ETC. 207 

On February 21, the opposition issued a manifesto written 
by Armand Marrast, calling on the populace and National 
Guard to escort the banqueters in solemn procession to the ban- 
queting place — the Place de la Madeline — in the Elysian Fields. 
But during the day the determined tone of the Government 
discouraged the liberal leaders and they decided, on the evening 
before the banquet was to occur, to give it up but to announce 
to the people that they would accuse and attempt to impeach 
the Ministry. This announcement appeared in the morning 
papers, but thosands had already gathered to escort the ban- 
queters to the feast and they refused, from morning up to noon, 
to be dispersed from the designated meeting place at the square 
before the Madeline church. About noon the more radical 
leaders and agitators of the secret societies endeavored to lead 
the populace in procession to the place where Parliament 
was in session. The government interposed at this point and 
easily dispersed the mob with a regiment of cavalry, but so in- 
creased its bitterness that barricades began to arise in the streets. 
These were promptly taken by the. troops and the king refused 
to be concerned even when the morning of the twenty-third 
showed that barricades were still being built. The king first 
began to realize the seriousness of the afFair when the news 
came that the National Guard was crying "Long live the re- 
form! and down with Guizot!" while the troops of the line 
v/ere passing from a condition of lukewarmness to one showing 
S3'mptoms of the same disease. 

Shortly after noon Guizot resigned and the king offered 
the ofKce to Mole, who refused. By evening vast multi- 
tudes were patrolling the brilliantly lighted boulevards and 
by nine o'clock five hundred blouse-clad laborers appeared 
before Guizot's palace, which was protected by troops. The 
commanding officer showed himself very temperate in the 
face of repeated jeers and insults from the laborers and with- 
held the troops from defense until the laborers crowded so close 
that in a few moments more the troops would be swept away 
and could not preserve their line. Then and not till then the 
command was given to fix bayonets. At this Sargeant Giacom- 



20S POLITICAL HISTORY OF EDROPE. 

mini without orders charged and the entire company arbitrarily 
followed his example. A few bloody moments, the horrible grind 
of steel on flesh, and a half a hundred corpses of men, women, 
and children lay upon the pavement. The mob now went mad 
and amid shrieks of "Murder! treachery! death! to arms! to 
arms!" inaugurated the real revolution. The bodies of six of 
the murdered were placed upon carts and dragged through the 
streets to inflame the populace. 

The king in this hour again offered Mole the head of the 
ministry and Mole again refused. In his despair he now turned 
to Thiers, who only consented to accept if Odillon Barrot were 
given him as a colleague. The king protested against taking 
this ultra radical into the cabinet, but yielded. But nothing 
could now stop the maddened populace. As a measure of con- 
ciliation, Lamoriciere was allowed to displace the recently ap- 
pointed Marshall Bugead as Commander of the National Guard 
and soon thereafter of the troops of the line. He proclaimed 
to the populace at eight o'clock on the morning of February 24, 
that: the Chambers had been dissolved, hostilities had ceased, 
and reform was promised, but all in vain. 

Fifteen hundred barricades had risen like mushrooms in a sin- 
gle night in the streets of Paris. "Louis Phillippe" shouted the 
populace "shoots at the people as did Charles X. We will ship 
him after his predecessor." By ten o'clock the mob had taken the 
Palais Royal and were threatening the Tuileries. At noon the 
king and princes rode on horseback along the front of the troops 
of the line and on the National Guard. The first received him 
in sullen silence, the latter shouted "Long live the reform." 

This treatment of the king was significant of the real character 
of this "revolution of contempt." It broke the spirit of the king. 
Downcast and disheartened he returned to the palace only to 
face an excited Deputy, Cremicux, who rushed unannounced 
into the palace and shouted : "Abdicate Sire or your dinasty will 
be lost as well as your throne!" Louis' white-haired wife, the 
brave Queen Am.elie, begged him rather mount his horse and 
die in honorable battle than ignominiously to abdicate, but the 
king bowed before the storm and wrote his abdication. Mar- 



FRANCE AND THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION, ETC. 209 

shal Bugeaud now added his entreaties to those of the queen, 
but the king added his signature. 

The abdication was not unconditional, but was in favor of 
his grandson, the little Count of Paris. Thus bj^ poetic justice 
the man who had not only ignored but concealed the fact that 
Charles X, had abdicated in favor of his little grandson Henry, 
was forced in his turn to trust the hopes of his dynasty to a five- 
year-old child. The Duke of Nemours by virtue of the law 
passed in 1842, assumed the regency and together with the 
mother of the little king remained behind in the palace while 
the king and the other m.embers of the royal family dressed 
them.selves hastily in citizens' clothes and escaped through the 
garden of the Tuileries to where hired cabs waited to convey 
them to St. Cloud, Under his arm Louis Phillippe had carried 
a portfolio containing his most important papers. In this igno- 
minious fashion ended the Orleans rule. The king who had 
come in like a fox, went out like a cur. 

Shortly after this escape Nemours and the Duchess of Or- 
leans with the two young princes went from the palace to the 
building in the neighborhood where the Chamber of Deputies 
was in session — a session of anarchy and disorder. Cheers 
greeted the appearance of the Duchess and had she been a Maria 
Theresa all might yet have been well for her son, but she dis- 
appointed the hopes of her friends by not addressing the house 
and sat down in dumb silence, her children at her side, to listen 
to the logomachy on which hung their future. 

One of the deputies, Dupin, on whose advice the Duchess 
had visited the assembly, made a stammering attempt at 
a speech in her favor and suggested that she assume the re- 
gency, a suggestion that was disheartened and discredited 
by the presence of Nemours and by the turmoil and confu- 
sion occasioned by the fact that the house galleries and floors 
v/ere being invaded by the capped and bloused Parisian 
mob. Lamartine moved to adjourn the session as long as 
the Duchess was present, whereupon she hesitated, arose, 
went as far as the door and then returned and resumed her 
seat. Odillon Barrot now sought to awaken the sympathy 



210 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

of the Assembly for this woman and child on whose heads the 
fate of the July monarchy rested. But unheeding Barrot's 
protest or the Duchess' presence the Deputy Marie calmly 
ascended the tribune and moved the installation of a provisional 
government. The Legitimists thundered an insulting Mene 
Tekel in the ear of the Duchess, a new and more turbulent wave 
of the mob washed over the floor of the assembly hall, drunken 
with the wine from the plundered cellars of the Tuileries, and 
grimy from the soot of its throne which they had dragged forth 
and burned in the streets. The proletariat mob forced the 
President Sauzet to adjourn the session, and unfurling a gigan- 
tic tricolor over the tribune demanded the proclamation of the 
Republic. For a few moments the lives of the Duchess and 
her children were in extreme danger. She became separated 
from her children in the attempt to reach the door. The Count 
of Paris was rescued in a few minutes, but his younger brother, 
the little Duke of Chartres, was not restored to her for several 
days. He was finally brought to the Castle of Count Montes- 
quiou, where she had found at last a refuge. 

Meantime in the Chamber, from which she had been driven 
by the socialistic herd, chaos reigned supreme. The president 
had vanished, and workmen and Deputies were mingled in 
hopeless and noisy confusion on the floor of the Chamber, 
Lamartine alone seemed to retain his presence of mind. He 
thrust the eighty-year-old Dupont de I'Eure in the President's 
chair; demanded, obtained, and held the floor; and inviting all 
present, workmen and members alike, to take part in the voting, 
called for the election of the Provisional Government. After 
the question had been submitted to the hybrid howling mob, he 
declared arbitrarily, that Dupont de I'Eure, Pages, Arago, 
Marie, Ledru Rollin, Cremieux and himself were elected. He 
totally disregarded the clamor of those who demanded that the 
name of Louis Blanc be added to the list. The session was then 
declared adjourned to the city hall. 

With the greatest difficulty and not without armed protection 
the members of the Provisional Government finally secured 
there a suitable room. The first official act was to elect as 



FRANCE AND THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION, ETC. 211 

Secretaries with advisory voice Louis Blanc and four others 
who in the editorial chambers of several newspapers had been 
put on the list for a provisional government that in other re- 
spects corresponded with the one named. A division being thus 
averted they declared the legislative body dissolved by acclama- 
tion and proclaimed the Republic, subject to referendum ratifi- 
cation by a vote of all the people, on a basis of manhood suffrage, 
A ministry was then named and a Government actually set 
upon its feet capable of at least a temporary activity. 

All this while the greatest confusion still reigned without. 
Endless throngs paraded the brilliantly lighted streets and one 
band after another entered by force the building where the 
Provisional Government was holding its sittings. One crowd 
that entered bellowing for the head of Lamartine he disarmed 
by ironically remarking: "I wish to God that each one of you 
had it on your shoulders, then you would have more sense than 
you have now." His presence of mind was all that saved the 
day, and the night. Up till one o'clock at night the crowds 
paraded and the uproar began again at five on the morning of 
the 25th. This time the prevailing tone was socialistic and the 
multitudes demanded the substitution of the blood red banner 
of Socialism for the tricolor. "Your red flag," said Lamartine, 
"has only gone in procession around the Mars field and is bap- 
tized with the blood of citizens, but the tricolor has been 
carried by French bravery through all Europe, and if it should 
fall the half of France's glory would sink with it into the dark- 
ness of forgetfulness." 

During the day the demands of the Socialists were in so far 
yielded to that the "Right to Labor" was formally recognized. 
This concession and the news that the forts surrounding the 
city had surrendered to the Provisional Government placated 
the Socialists. The citizens met for an armed muster on the 
Bastile square and there solemnly proclaimed the Republic. 
Foreign nations were immediately assured of France's friendli- 
ness. Arrangements were made for a general election, and 
m.eantime Louis Blanc held a Labor-Parliament in the Luxem- 
bourg palace and Marie arranged the series of National Work- 



212 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EDROPE. 

shops. This measure Is usually attributed to Louis Blanc's in- 
fluence, but was in fact a concession to the dreaded sans culotte 
element on the part of the anti-socialistic members and the 
measure was passed against Louis Blanc's protest. It was in- 
tended to serve the double purpose of temporarily satisfying the 
clamor of Louis Blanc's socialistic followers and of showing by 
its failure the permanent reductio ad absurdam of the socialistic 
idea of the right to labor. 

At the time of their institution there were in Paris only 
about fourteen thousand idle m.en. But when the news spread 
the country roads soon swarmed with workmen and peasants 
coming to labor at the expense of the State. Laborers other- 
wise employed, tempted by the nominal labor, good pay, and 
easy hours of the workshop sinecure left their old employments. 
Within a few days there were 100,000 men employed by the 
government in idle digging and carting and other varieties of 
useless labor invented for the sole purpose of furnishing employ- 
ment. The beneficiaries marched to and fromi work in com- 
panies and regiments and spent the evening hours at the clubs in 
rant and rhodomontade and vigorously cursing Lamartine, the 
poet. This poet's cool head had nevertheless rescued Paris from 
reliving the days of the Terror and the Commune. 

Realizing that they only represented a class faction, and a 
city class faction at that, these clubs now devoted all their 
energies to postponing the date of the election that would 
fortify the Republic. By the noisy demonstration of a march 
through the streets 100,000 strong on March 17, they did suc- 
ceed both in postponing the election to April 27, and in sending, 
at public expense, two commissioners to every department of the 
Republic to convert the people to Socialism. 

When it became evident the people would not be converted, 
the Socialists attempted to supplant the Provisional Government 
by a Committee for the Public Welfare. On the i6th of 
April they v^^ere overpowered by troops, chiefly of the National 
Guard and forced to recognize the Government. To further 
intimidate them, Lamartine called the National Guard, 350,000 
strong, to meet under arms for a "Feast of Brotherhood" on 



FRANCE AND THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION, ETC. 213 

April 20. This occasion was utilized to present to the troops 
their new colors. As they received them from the hands of the 
war minister, Arago, they made the welkin ring with shouts of 
"Down with the Commune!" 

Eight days later the election for the National Assembly took 
place. Lamartine was returned as Deputy from two depart- 
ments and received 2,300.000 votes, 260,000 of them in Paris, 
where the candidates of the Clubs only polled 20,000 votes all 
told. 

On May, 4th, the Provisional Government gave an account 
cf its stewardship to the newly elected Assem.bly and the gov- 
ernment was transferred. The Assembly then offered the 
Presidency of the Republic to Lamartine and he declined, pre- 
ferring and expecting to receive the office at the hands of the peo- 
ple. A new Executive Committee of five, composed largely of 
the old members but with Arago, the former Minister of War, 
at its head novv' assumed the reins of government. In this com- 
mittee Lamartine had only fourth place. This arrangement 
was to continue until a President could be elected by popular 
vote. 

Paris had lived through another crisis. France had survived 
another revolution. The success of the new regime was now 
threatened only by the red spectre of Socialism, and its two 
sinister shadows, the Clubs and the National Workshops. The 
latter daily squandered the people's money on what every eye 
could Gcc profited nothing and yet the Socialists made no bones 
of declaring the attem.pt to abolish them would be met with 
armed resistance. The alarm at this threat spread through all 
the country, and joined with the sentiment for a monarchy and 
the spell cf the Napoleonic name prepared the country for that 
surprise that was in store for it, — that coming event whose 
shadow cast before was the election of Louis Napoleon as a 
member of the nev/ National Assembly. But before that event 
was consummated communism that had so vociferously drawn 
the sword, was to perish by the sword. 

On May lOth the newly elected National Assembly had 
selected the Committee with Arago as its chairman to arrange 



214 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

for the election of a president by popular vote as Lamartine had 
refused that office at the hands of the National Assembly. Not 
contented with making propaganda at State expense, every 
day witnessed some new outrage, excess, or demand of the 
Socialists. The prisons vomited forth their political prisoners 
hot with frenzy against all forms of government. Such men as 
Barbes, Blanqui, Huber, Bernard went from the chill of the 
prison cells to the hot and sweltering atmosphere of the reopen- 
ed clubs there to preach the most visionary Socialistic ideas. 
Albert, who had been one of the secretaries with advisory voice 
of the Provisional Government was an avowed Communist. 
Not only were the Ateleirs Nationaux kept open paying each 
man two francs a day for three hours' work, but, perhaps in 
imitation of the old panem et circenses of the Romans, gifts and 
opera tickets were distributed to the mob. 

Despite all this state care for the laborer, poverty, hunger, 
and beggarjr increased every day. Paper money and bank notes 
were no longer accepted. Currency credit died the death of the 
violent. Specie became scarcer and scarcer. Factories closed 
their doors unable to compete with state paid idleness — an 
idleness that cost the public treasury a million francs a week. 
This was almost the only money in circulation. The uncer- 
tainty in regard to property became such that the necessaries of 
life constantly increased in cost. Trade stagnated. The popu- 
lace of Paris was reduced to a condition of barter where all 
articles of luxury could be bought for almost a song. Laces, 
furs, silks, plate, statues, paintings, marbles, all things costly 
and beautiful, even jewels, could hardly be sold for the price of 
bread. Scenes similar to these in Paris were being enacted in 
Bordeaux, Rouen, and Lyons. 

A renewed insurrection in Poland gave the occasion for the 
last outbreak of Socialism and also for its overthrow. On May 
15, this Polish insurrection was to be discussed in the National 
Assembly. Under pretense of presenting a petition in favor of 
the Poles a miscellaneous multitude assembled before the Par- 
liament buildings. The Chief of Police was invisible and was 
believed to be in sympathy with the demonstrations. The Na- 



FRANCE AND THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION, ETC. 215 

tional Guard, although called to arms, only responded in small 
numbers as the cry of wolf! wolf! when there was no wolf 
had gone forth so often that they did not realize the crucial 
hour had come. General Courtais at the head of what troops 
could be speedily collected could have still dispersed the mob 
but lost either his judgment or his nerve and attempted to stop 
the mob with moral suasion. He was simply brushed aside for 
in the front ranks of that crowd the "Reds" of Paris had placed 
their most daring leaders — men who still wore on their faces the 
pallor acquired in Parisian prisons. 

The m.ob leaders were scon rattling at the grated doors that 
led to the Assembly rooms and this time they could not be moved 
by the eloquence of Lamartine and Ledru Rollin who addressed 
them from the head of the stairs. They first forced the admis- 
sion of some twenty of their number as delegates led by Blanqui. 
Then from the other side they forced the doors and the crowd 
swarmed in, and demanded that France immediately draw the 
sword for Poland and vote a tax of a thousand millions on the 
rich. Garnier Pages had meantime ordered all regiments of 
the National Guard to be called to arms to protect the As- 
sembly. The news of what was being done was now causing 
the National Guard-^that represented as always the Bourgeoisie 
— to assemble in thousands to answer the call. The only ques- 
tion was whether the Assembly could hold out until they came. 
Inside the Assembly rooms pandemonium reigned. The Presi- 
dent momentarily expected attack and was forced in order to 
save his life to send orders to the mayor to revoke the call to 
arms. In justification for this yielding it ought to be stated 
that he knew the revocation would be without effect. Even at 
the m.oment, there was heard the loud alarm of the drums and 
the shrill notes of the bugle blowing the call to arms. The 
President was thereupon hurled from his seat and he and the 
Vice-President and the most of the Representatives escaped 
from the building which was now given over to the mob. Huber 
ascended the tribune and declared the Assembly (so recently 
elected by will of all the people) dissolved. He then tried to 
adjourn the mob to the Hotel de Ville to form a new provisional 



216 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

government, but already the heavy tramp of feet on the stairs 
proclaimed that the soldiers were at hand, the invaders fled in 
disorder and the soldiers cleared the hall. 

The members of the Assembly returned and resumed the 
session. At the Hotel de Ville, Albert, Barbes, Louis Blanc, 
Cabet, Raspail, and Proudhon, were attempting to organize 
their new provisional government when the Mayor of Paris, 
Armand Marrast, surprised and captured the lot. It was deter- 
mined to deliver the city from the brooding fear of the Social- 
istic terror where for a month every snake of discontent had 
lifted his head and hissed. The Chief of Police and the Gen- 
eral who had failed to disperse the mob were removed from their 
positions. Barbes and Albert were deported. Louis Blanc took 
refuge in flight, and Blanqui and others were returned to prison 
with sentences for varying terms of years. As a conclusive 
measure it was determined to abolish the Ateliers Nationaux. 

Meantime new elections in June had returned Louis Na- 
poleon from at least four departments supported by a curious 
mixture of Reds, Communists, Bonapartists and Democrats. 
Paris returned Proudhon, who had escaped the fate of his fellow 
conspirators, and other Socialists were also elected but they were 
in a small and constantly decreasing minority. They felt that 
the reins of power were slipping from their hands. The propo- 
sition to abolish the National Workshops and the arrest of 
Emil Thomas, their director, drove them to madness and they 
determined to submit only to the decision of the barricade and 
the bayonet. 

It was not to be a conflict between the Socialist leaders and 
the doctrinaires. It was in reality the Republic fighting against 
the Commune, the citizen against the artisan, labor against 
respectability. The leaders were the officers of the regiments 
and brigades of the workshop employees. Their plans were 
matured beforehand. The Government also realized that the 
irrepressible conflict was near and had prepared to meet it. 
Cavaignac was elected War Minister and chose his subordinates 
with care. Ke made his plans of battle before the first gun was 
fired. If Charles X, or Louis Phillippe, had prepared for revo- 



FRANCE AND THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION, ETC. 217 

lution with the same foresight they could have retained their 
thrones, for the storms that had swept them away were but as 
summer zephyrs compared with that which was to break over 
the head of the infant republic. 

On the evening of June 22, the workmen gathered by 
thousands at the Place de la Pantheon, the appointed meet- 
ing place while Cavaignac ordered his troops commanded by 
Dumesne and Lamoriciere to their previously designated posts. 

The strongholds of the Socialists were the tenement districts, 
the wards such as the faubourg St. Antoine, filled with swarm- 
ing masses of the lowest classes of humanity. Yet the entire 
city was at first in their hands. General Cavaignac was later 
accused of allowing them undisturbed to make complete prepar- 
ations in order that his military glory might be greater in sup- 
pressing them, but the truth is probably that both sides hesi- 
tated to proceed to drastic measures until it was seen that the 
armed collision was inevitable. 

The first day of the conflict was the twenty-third. The 
Executive Com.mittee of five was still in command and during 
pauses in the fighting Lamartine passed unharmed from side to 
side acclaimed by both. The laborers even urged him to take 
their side and command them. Part of the fighting of the first 
day was amidst the lightning and thunder of a terrific storm. 
The elements seemed to join mankind in the work of havoc. 

On the night of the twentj^-third the troops of the forts sur- 
rounding the city and of the National Guard of the nearby 
villages entered the gates of the city. 

On the morning of the twenty-fourth nearly four thousand 
barricades at distances of from one to two hundred yards filled 
the streets of Paris. All of them were formidable, and some of 
them were piles of masonry with the solidity of regular fortifi- 
cations. They were defended by grimy but determined vi^ork- 
men, students, and criminals, mad with the enthusiasm of 
fanatics, the lust of blood, and the sense of hunger and wrong. 

These barricades were supported by criss-cross fire from the 
sharpshooters in the balconies and windows of adjoining houses. 

Command could no longer be exercised bv a committee. The 



218 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

full power of military dictator was conferred on General Ca- 
vaignac. With remorseless determination he swept square after 
square and street after street until by evening the vicinity of 
the Hotel de Ville was clear of insurgents, although their 
strongholds were yet unstormed. 

On the night of the twenty-fourth both sides slept on their 
guns and at their posts and with the dawn the conflict was re- 
newed. The fighting was of the same terrific character. Gen- 
eral Brea and one of his Aids who went with a flag of truce to 
the insurgents were insulted, murdered and mutilated. The 
Archbishop Affre dressed in the full regalia of his pontifical 
ofllice and accompanied by two vicars in full canonicals also at- 
tempted to act as mediator. With cross upraised he reached the 
summit of the insurgent barricade only to fall mortally wound- 
ed, pierced by a shot from a window, as was supposed. Wh,en 
urged not to make the attempt he had replied: "Bonus pastor 
dat vitara suam pro ovibus suis." 

Perhaps under the shock of his death the insurgents now pro- 
posed to surrender on condition of absolute and complete 
amnesty for all participants. Cavaignac refused to consider 
anything less than unconditional surrender. The fighting was 
resumed. Slowly, with difficulty and bloody loss, but eventually 
succeeding in every assault, the troops carried barricade after 
barricade and street after street until they had eaten their way 
into the very heart of the enemies' territory. Since the death of 
General Brea no quarter had been shown on either side. The 
result was inevitable. The trained troops conquered and the 
insurgents finally fled, leaving fifteen thousand prisoners in the 
hands of the soldiers. The number of the dead has been esti- 
mated variously at from two to thirty thousand. Ten thousand 
is doubtless a safe estimate. Seven French Generals, more than 
fell at Waterloo, were also among the dead. 

Of the surrendeded prisoners some were deported to Cayenne 
and the Colonies, many were sent to the galleys, and the rest 
filled the prisons until the burden of their support forced the 
government to set them free. 

Cavaignac immediately after the battle attempted to resign 



FRANCE AND THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION, ETC. 219 

his dictatorship but the public fear was so great that he was not 
permitted to do so. 

The clubs were closed and eleven newspapers were suppressed 
by a censorship more rigorous than had been exercised by Bour- 
bon or Orleans within the century. The revolution had over- 
thrown the king and had slain itself. The only defense against 
anarchy is Caesarism. Out of the bloody chaos of lawlessness 
and licentiousness always rises the armored form of the mili- 
tary dictator. 

The new government had still to form a constitution and in- 
augurate an executive. 

The three questions of importance were. First, as to the 
legislature should the unicameral or the bicameral system be 
adopted. Odillon Barrot favored the first and Lamertine the 
second. Lamertine by a vote of 530 to 289 was victorious. The 
second question was as to whether the right of labor should still 
be recognized. The right of laborers to demand work and sup- 
port at public expense was now as formally denied as it had 
been formally conceded, but some vague duty on the part of the 
government to provide vv'ork for as many as possible was still re- 
cognized, more from a desire not to be too inconsistent with the 
former policy than for any other reason. The thii-d question 
was as to whether the president should be chosen by the legis- 
lature or by popular suffrage. The latter method was decided 
on and universal suffrage was granted. 

Slavery was abolished and the rights of petition and assembly 
granted. Cavaignac as the hero of the battle against the Reds 
expected to be elected president. Lamertine as the true hero 
of the February revolution and as the most potent factor in the 
overthrow of the July monarchy cherished a similar expecta- 
tion. The assembly did not even think it necessary to exclude 
from the candidacy for the presidency scions of the Houses that 
had at any time ruled over France. 

'But there was another Richmond in the field strong in the 
power of "that strange spell, a name." Charles Louis Napoleon, 
to give him his full name, member of the assembly, the return- 
ed exile, came out in a letter of thanks to the R.epublic that had 



220 POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE. 

called him as a wanderer home, shortly after he openly announc- 
ed himself a candidate for the presidency. 

The alliance with Ledru-Rollin and the part he had played 
in the Socialist insurrection had caused the glittering popularity 
of Lamertine to vanish like the proverbial snow-flake in the river. 
All the Socialists were for any man who could beat Cavaignac. 
Napoleon in several pamphlets had courted their sympathy. 
His name stood for an aggressive foreign policy and the glory 
that comes from foreign war. France had keenly felt her isola- 
tion among the nations under the restored Bourbons and the 
House of Orleans. The army and the nation hungered for war. 
The peasants and the country outside of Paris rallied to the 
man of the grey coat and the cocked hat. The returns in the 
election of December lo, showed 5,534,520 votes for Napoleon 
while Cavaignac received less than a million and a half and Lam- 
ertine was found to have taken fifth place with only 17,919 
votes. 

Truly republics are ungrateful. What the February revolu- 
tion stood for was certainly represented by either Cavaignac or 
Lamertine, what the vote stood for, was something that Louis 
Napoleon as the head of a democratic-republic could never give. 
The new president alone of all France was required to swear 
allegiance to the new Constitution an oath that not alone his 
own inclination but the power that swept him into office would 
force him to break. 

By the time he had made the oath all the revolutions of 1848, 
the aftermath of the one in France, had manifested their impo- 
tency and frothed themselves out in rhetoric and windy demon- 
stration. The revolutions of this memorable year deserve a 
volume by themselves. They were allowed to have f reee course. 
Every constellation of the great powers was scattered. The 
great nations were not in condition to combine against the powers 
of the deep. Affairs in Afghanistan, Persia, China, and Turkey 
had put England and Russia into the hostile camps they occupy 
even to-day. With the loss of Hannover, the ways of England 
and Germany had parted. Over Schleswig Holstein, Germany 
and Denmark were at enmity. Italy, Switzerland, and Hun- 



FRAMCE AMD THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION, ETC. 221 

gary, were arrayed against Austria. The entente cordiale be- 
tween England and France was at an end and the bonds of the 
Holy Alliance were broken. Each nation of Europe stood iso- 
lated and the hour of democracy had come. How that hour was 
wasted can not be told in this volume. 

Germany at least was to demonstrate that, for it, unity and 
salvation did not lie that way. It was to remain helpless and 
disunited until the new Siegfried should fuse in the crucible 
of war the sword that could not be welded on the anvil of de- 
mocracy and cement with "blood and iron" the scattered frag- 
ments of the Fatherland. 

THE END. 



V*^,K*<* 



LB D '03 



Political History of Europe 

From 1815 to 1848. 

BASED ON CONTINKNTAL AUTHORITIJCS. 
BY 

B. H. CARROLL, Jr., Ph. D. 



BAYLOR UNIVERSITY PRESS, PUBLISHERS. 

WACO, TEXAS. 

price: paper Cover, $2.0o; board cover, $2.50. 



rlW- 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proces 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: MAV — 'TjfK' 

Preservationlechnologiei 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATIO 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 



